So, this is where things are going to start going off canon-ish a little more. Hopefully there are some people out there enjoying this, but I'm having fun getting back into some writing regardless.
CHAPTER IV
You had been the one to volunteer to check out the Alchemy Club and try to get some more information. Laura had, of course, wanted to come along, but you managed to convince her to let you handle it. This whole thing was starting to get weirder by the day. One step forward, two steps back. You hated it.
With the way Natalie and SJ were acting would Elsie even be the same person if you could find her and bring her back?
Was it already too late?
You were skulking around the science buildings looking for anyone you recognized from the Alchemy club. So far, nothing. You can feel the pressure building in your shoulders and neck, going up into your jaw and temples. Probably not good to be clenching your teeth so tightly.
All of a sudden this had become a race, and you feel like you're hours late getting off the starting blocks.
"You're fast though. You'll catch up, you'll find her." You have to.
Students pass you by, some alone, others in groups. They laugh, they joke, they bitch about classes and exams, and why hasn't so-and-so texted them back.
Was it only a few days ago that those were the same thoughts that occupied your mind, the same troubles?
A short boy with glasses hanging off a crooked nose steps out of a classroom and heads down the hall. Your eyes follow him, hunting for the memory you need. Him by a barrel, pouring whatever started the Fog.
The last party you went to with Elsie.
It's hazy from the alcohol you'd had, but you know it's him.
He cuts down a staircase and you don't hesitate to follow him down into the basement, to a room at the end of the hall with the symbol for the alchemy club on the door. When you slip in you see him hunched over a desk scribbling in a notebook, and pausing to take measurements from a sample of what looks to be some sort of fungus.
"Hey" He dropped his ruler and spins around with a small yelp. Maybe you should have started with something better. "Are you in the Alchemy club?"
He pushes his glasses up his nose, reaching for the dropped supplies. "Obviously, do you need something? I didn't think the Summer Society had ordered anything for any parties?"
Maybe you should be more surprised he knows you're in the Summer Society, you certainly don't think you've had any classes together, and it suddenly hits you that you're here to accuse a fellow student of abducting girls and you kind of wish you'd thought this through a little more. "No, not about stuff for a party… I was wondering.. umm.. well…".
Is there even a polite way to go about this?
"Look, is this important?" He cut you off, fidgeting with the ruler in his hands. His tone clipped and annoyed. "I'm kind of in the middle of a very sensitive mycological experiment."
Is this important? Is this important? Is this important?
You feel your vision wavering around the edges, shapes and shadows running together. Long legs sure do make it easier to cross a room in a hurry.
You're in front of him now, he's a small thing, and you can feel yourself bearing down over him. "What does the Alchemy club have to do with the disappearances of four girls on campus?" It's out of your mouth before you have time to stop and realize how crazy you must sound, cornering a scared, small boy in a dark basement, yelling accusations.
"Excuse me?" he backs away, "the Alchemy club didn't have anything to do with that."
"What's your name?" You've backed him into the end of the table now. Everything is still hazy, like you're watching from a far off place. Watching yourself intimidate and threaten, eyes narrow, mouth snarled.
Vague thoughts float across your mind, objections and fears. But your ears are pounding, and you feel like the tightness in your chest, the unwieldy beating of your heart, might last forever.
"I don't think that's any of your-" He's brandishing the ruler in front of him, a sword to slay the approaching beast. Like a small piece of plastic will stop you.
Like anything would stop you.
You grab the ruler and snap it in half, letting the pieces fall to the floor. "Name!"
"Alexander! It's Alexander!" His words sound more like frightened squeaks now.
Is this important?
"Well Alexander, let me explain how I see it." Your voice is low and threatening, pinning him in place as much as your body is. "The Alchemy club was at all the parties the missing girls went to last, it's the only common thread. Now I may not be a scientist, but doesn't that seem suspicious to you as well?"
"The Alchemy club does things for a lot of parties, that's no reason…."
You're grabbing the collar of his shirt and you notice his toes are just scraping the ground now. "Let's try this again, Alexander."
It this important?
When you emerge out of the dark cloisters of the basement, it's with a zip drive and new hope clutched in your scuffed, trembling hands.
The adrenaline hasn't worn off enough by the time you get to Laura's room, but walking in on Laura and Carmilla staring and smiling at each other while Laura holds out her wastebasket manages to slow your thoughts a little. It does nothing for the brutal tightness in your chest.
"Hey… guys. I return from the Alchemy department victorious." Victory is the only thing you're going to allow yourself to take from that basement, the shame can stay buried there.
"Wait, they are the ones behind it, taking the girls?" the skepticism is there, but you can also see her excitement, genuine hope, and maybe you should have phrased that better, because your own hope is starting to feel more like desperation with each passing day.
"Oh, no. More like they're the ones using dander collected at parties to seed an immense interconnected fungus throughout campus…" You ramble off. You can still feel the tense pull of your muscles, the anxious energy.
"I'm sorry, what now?"
"Apparently it's a communications experiment. Or maybe a very complicated risotto recipe." You don't want to think about Alexander squealing out information while you held him up by the neck, instead reaching for your small token of justification. The pounding in your head and heart had made all the science jargon even harder to understand. "I don't know. That's not the victory part. These creepy little proto scientists have been photo tracking every party on campus for their documentation."
It's weird and invasive of them, and you shouldn't feel bad for what you did. Besides some tears and rumpled clothes, you'd left Alexander in that basement in the same shape you found him.
"We have pictures of every party where the girls have disappeared?" Laura understands. She knows how big of a break this is for the two of you, for Elsie. She'd understand.
Is this important? You hear it echo in your thoughts still. Is this important?
Hell yeah it is.
"And we can track all the girls through all of them! Danny, you are brilliant."
"I like the sound of that." And you do, because the way Laura looks at you almost makes you feel like everything will be okay.
Fake coughing cuts through the moment. God forbid Carmilla let you enjoy anything without adding her snarky commentary. "Sorry. I just forgot that I have to be anywhere but here."
You can't control yourself as she shuffles out the door. Carmilla can't take this away from you; you won't let her. "Oh, that's too bad. No, come back."
"Don't." Well, that's something new.
"What? Why not?" Carmilla is the worst kind of person, and today you have no patience for her apathy, not when you were trying so damn hard.
"She's just had kind of a rough day is all." The simplicity of it gets you. Leave it to Laura to even see the good in someone as self-centered and rude as Carmilla. She'd understand.
"Oh, no. You are entirely too sweet." The moment of normalcy is a breath of fresh air after today. It seems like such a long time ago when you were just hoping to run into Laura outside of class, to have an excuse to talk to her, and now here you are tangled in this huge crazy mess together.
"Yeah, yeah. Come on. We have hundreds of photos to sort through. Well, that is going to be incredibly boring."
And it was an incredibly boring amount of time later, but you think you've finally found something useful, but upsetting (to Laura at least). She'd drifted off on her desk maybe an hour ago, occasionally muttering nonsense in her sleep.
"No, I don't… I see the goldfish…"
Nonsense exactly like that. She looks so adorable sleeping there. It's nice to have a moment to quite your thoughts. And after this latest clue, your thoughts needed some quieting. You only wish you could see her eyes again. Be able to get lost in them without feeling like every second is stolen time. "Hey, Laura. Laura. Laura, you're dreaming." She just looks so cute, and your finger gently brushes against the tip of her nose before you can think better of it.
"Whaaa! I'm awake." Shit, not the reaction you were hoping for. She's startled and scared, and you want the ground to swallow you whole for so many reasons.
"Don't bite my head off or anything." You hope you don't sound as defensive and embarrassed as you do in your head. You need a distraction and in your only stroke of luck that day you have a big one waiting on the screen in front of you. "Okay, no, but I think I found something."
"What? Where?" There's that hope again, but you know Laura isn't going to be as happy about this discovery.
"Okay, look: Elsie. The sister who's missing?"
"Mhmm." She follows you to the picture on the screen, staring intently.
"There she is at the party. And take a look at who's with her." You're not sure if you should be surprised on not yourself.
"Holy crap. Carmilla."
"Are you okay? Did they try to get in?" You're out of breath, hair wild, hands scrambling to lock the door behind you.
"Who are 'they'?" She sounds more confused than scared and you remember back to that first meeting in her room. Always surprising you.
"The Zetas. They were trying to walk the women's swim team home from the gym, but then one of the girls called us for help. But then someone shoved someone, and now it's turned into this big turf war over who'll protect the gym or the track or who knows what else! I didn't know if it made it this far." It had been messy, even by Silas's standards; things hadn't gotten this out of hand in a long time. You can still hear the shouts outside. From here it almost sounds like a real battle. In this quite moment, where you finally feel like you're breathing again, it almost feels like one too. "I had to know if you were okay."
"Oh, wow. That's… Why are you wearing war paint?"
Why are you wearing war paint? When had that happened? You have the vague recollection of one of your sisters rubbing smears here and there with some of the splattered paint from the guns, but it feels far away once again. Everything had happened so fast. You had thought you buried that feeling in its tomb in the basement of the science building, where it belonged.
Knocking at the door saves you from having to answer, but you're not sure the voice you hear on the other side is worth even your salvation.
"Hey, little nerd! Laura! Are you in there?" The last thing the tempest between your ears and your lungs needs right now is having to deal with Brody Fucking Kirsch.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me" She gets up like she's going to let him in and you can barely believe it. Hadn't she heard anything you said?
"Laura? Laura! What are you doing?!" Kirsch is just as big as you, you won't be able to just overpower him like you can do with others. Like you did with Alexander. You need an element of surprise.
"It's only Kirsch! We're fine." Only Kirsch? He's the enemy, he's a Zeta, he's one of the guys you fought through to get to Laura. He's the kind of guy you'd been protecting yourself and your friends from all your life.
"I was really worried about you because-" You manage to get a hold of the sensitive shell of his year before dragging him down to the bed. "Whoa! Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"
"Danny, geez!" She looks scared, and shocked, and that just makes you want to hurt Kirsch more because Laura can't look at you like that, she has to understand or this feeling in your head, and your heart may never go away.
"Come on! Why are the hotties in this room always trying to hurt me?!"
"Karma?" You supply the answer for him. You know Kirsch, you know what kind of guy he is. He's the same as the spoiled, entitled jerks you've been going to private schools with all your life. Lives of no rules, and fewer consequences.
"Uncool, Summer Psycho. Not a Mark of Kingsberry rules." Psycho, you wonder if you lost your mind if you'd even recognize it. Right now it didn't feel like just your mind that you were losing.
"That's boxing, dumbass." You almost feel like telling him it's The Marquess of Queensberry rules, but you can't deal with him right now. Not with your fist too tight and your eyes too wide, and too much pressure and regret coursing through your veins. Laura's still looking up at you like she's never seen you before, and you need her to just stop. "I can't believe you let him in here. For all you know, he was trying to take this dorm for the Zetas!"
"Hey, we're just trying to protect hot people." He tries to justify, tries to reason. For all you know it's the Zetas doing this to the girls on campus, maybe some kind of date rape drug thing. Those pictures with Carmilla didn't really prove anything.
"The only threat to the girls in this dorm is you and your fratdaddy friends." You feel yourself moving again; from his position sitting it almost feels the same as the basement. Kirsch doesn't look scared of you though, abstractly you think that should make you feel better about the whole situation, instead it just adds fuel to the fire burning between your lungs, trapped by the cage of your ribs.
"Okay, maybe we should just…" Laura tries to calm things down. In a sort of detached way you can feel this getting out of hand. Kirsch is standing up and you can see his shoulders set and muscles tense almost as a mirror of your own.
"That is unfair, okay? 'Cause I'm here out of the, like, bro-ness of my heart, alright? I'm not even trying to hook up 'cause I got a girlfriend, alright? So why is everyone so pissed at us because we're trying to keep the campus safe?" His voice is getting louder, and you can feel your hands itching to reach out and just force him to understand. Could you beat and break the truth into his skin? He couldn't understand being afraid wherever he went on campus, afraid of all of his friends being hurt or disappearing. Never coming back the same, or never coming back at all.
"Because safe for you goons does not mean safe for everyone else!" It's loud and angry and not at all in control.
Laura's objection barely register now, nearly silent, like the soft cry of a dove wanting to be heard through the screeching of hawks. "Okay, no, no, seriously…"
"If you weren't such a hottie, you'd be in big, big trouble."
It's enough to break you and your hands collide with his shoulder. "Bring it, popped collar." You're not sure if you mean it as a challenge or a threat, but there is paint on your face and dirt on your hands and you just desperately need to make someone understand.
Is this important?
"Okay! Stop it! Stop it, both of you! I get it. You both wanna protect the campus. So, has it even occurred to you that while you're duking it out, nobody is actually out there protecting anybody at all?!"
She's disappointed, and annoyed, and you've never heard her direct that tone of voice to you before, Carmilla maybe, but not you. "But he's the one who started-"
"He started it?! Really?!" Okay, so maybe that had made you sound like childish.
"We totally didn't start it!" At least Kirsch wasn't making himself look any better either.
"Not helping! All I'm saying is that the actually useful thing to do might be to skip the smackdown in the middle of my bedroom and go talk some sense into the idiots setting fire to security carts over who gets to protect people."
You can feel your head hang and for the first time in days the fire burning in your chest seems to have been quenched. The soggy, smoking remains feel even worse than the flames.
"I knew from the first day of English Lit that you were smart." Kirsch's chastized puppy look as he turns to you doesn't make it any better. He doesn't deserve to share anything with you, not your duty, not your anger, not even your shame. "She is so smart."
"Yes, she is."
"And a hottie. That's-"
Can never manage to keep it clean, can he? "Aaaaand it's time for you to go now." You force Kirsch from the room, and you feel like you need to force yourself out with him. "Laura, are you sure you're gonna be okay by yourself?"
"I'm fine. Besides, she doesn't know that I know anything. I should be worried about you, turf war and all." The genuine concern in her voice feels like a salve you don't deserve.
"Ah, it's mostly just paintballs and anchovies. I'll talk them down."
"Take care!"
You know she doesn't mean it as a warning, but it's starting to feel like maybe she should.
