22.

Monday afternoon, five hours after my bacon butty epiphany, waiting for Sewee down at the dock. Ideally, we would have been planning our felony right about now. Although 'felony' was such a harsh word. 'Break-in' sounded so much less offensive.

Shelton did not agree. It didn't help that he had been mugged by some punk kid on a Nando's run with Hi the day before. Hi's penchant for Oreo-and-PB milkshakes required more time than the lunch hour allowed, so Shelton had cut to the diner while Hi waited for their take-out wings to fry, Hi's argument being that he would drink both shakes before even returning to Nando's if he was forced to go.

Either way, Shelton had been freaked out pretty bad by the time he eventually reentered the chicken palace. He'd been on the way back from the diner when he spotted some thirteen-year-olds trading phones covertly. One was an iPhone in a (supposedly) recognisable limited edition Marvel case.

Two shake-grenades later, and Shelton had regained the phone he hadn't known had been taken; all was right again. Sort of. He was understandably shaken up and now freaked out that our external attackers had started targeting him. Also, he said that the sour-milk smell and slightly sticky screen would be haunting him forever more (or at least until he got an upgrade). Hi was bummed about the milkshakes and that he hadn't been there.

I was with him on that last count, but external attackers notwithstanding, there were more personally pressing issues I had to deal with. Like, Ella.

I'd sought her out after class and took her arm. She didn't even have to ask, her face sobering up when she caught sight of my serious expression. A ladies' room conference ensued – not my location of choice, due to stall eavesdroppers, but I couldn't come up with somewhere else nearby and unsuspicious.

"What's up?" She'd been concerned, shaking her gorgeous hair out of her eyes. Tendrils had escaped, but they looked like specially-teased locks, not my uncontrollably-wild look.

I'd pushed aside hair thoughts and tried to focus. "Why'd you abandon me on Sunday? I really needed you."

Ella's eyebrows rose at my accusatory tone. I tried to school my features into the true pathetic feelings coming through, and not mask it as anger. "My mom pulled rank and forced me to stay as her flower-arranging doll. Sorry, I didn't mean to bail on you."

"It's fine." I sighed, pushed a hand through my hair. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be a total witch. It's just… Whitney and Jason's mom are spreading crap about me and Jase. She cornered me and wants to have some sort of family get-together, but he hasn't even told me he lied to his mom. And Ashley's stalking me along with Madison."

Ella's pretty nose scrunched up. "What are they saying? I mean, you know how I feel about you totes working with him as a couple. Or, you know, you in any fun relationship."

"Well, he told them that we were dating. But how many times do I have to tell him that I never want to be more than friends ever? The only person I'm close to dating isn't even…" I bashed my heel against the sink pipe and leaned back.

Ella broke into a wry grin, watching me closely. "Who? C'mon, you can't dangle secrets in front of me this way, Brennan! It's not Chance, is it?"

"He has a girlfriend. Who happens to be my stalker."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

I made a gagging gesture, but couldn't stop myself giggling with her. "No, that ship sailed a year ago. And Hannah's stalking opportunities are limited in prison."

"I am just kidding. You don't need to explain your whirlwind romance with Ben Blue to me." Ella laughed outright when I stared at her. "Was making out with him at the fair not enough of a signal?"

"Everyone else has just been ignoring it," I grumbled.

"Well rest assured, I'm now a complete and total Tory-Ben shipper." She crossed herself with a put-upon demure expression. "What'll your couple name be – Ten? Bentoria? Victen?"

"Stop it," I laughed, keeping half an eye on some freshmen who came in.

"No, this'll be great. Now you've come out and told me, I can tease you all the time."

"Only if you want me to tease you all the time about a certain friend of mine with a certain crush."

Ella groaned. "Don't go there! I'll have to channel my pity into violence, and then you'll be sorry."

"Not a true love match then?" I kept my tone light, but this was a topic that clearly had repercussions for me. Part of me would have liked my friends to be happy together. Most of me knew it wasn't practical until Hi became interested in weights and Ella became interested in World of Warcraft. Until then, I would rather keep relationships as unstrained as possible. After all, Ben and I had enough ups and downs to fill that quota (and then some).

Ella scrunched up her nose. "He's nice in a guy-friend way. Not…"

"Yeah, s'cool." I switched topics before awkwardness could develop. "What do you think I should do about Jason?"

Ella's contemplative expression immediately zapped back to business. "You have to talk to him privately and soon. As soon as possible. Get him to halt everything in its tracks. Make a deal that you'll not be a bitch about his lies if he stops it all right then."

"Whoa, horsey. This is all kind of specific."

"I've seen it too many times is all," Ella nodded sagely.

From there, we had giggled our way through to the end of the day. Word of a lacrosse championship win was filtering through by last period, and Jason texted me an invite to a celebratory boat party. They'd be travelling down this evening so no wonder tomorrow night was a perfect climax to the wave of victory they'd be riding at school tomorrow.

On consultation of Ella, she ordered me to do the cornering of Jason there. Private but not too private. I could stay for hours if I had to, and seeing as it was his parents' boat, Jase wouldn't be getting so trashed he couldn't steer it back into the marina.

Perfect.

And now, as I watched the white teeth of Candela loom on the horizon, I tried to sort through how to play it at the party. Stroking Cooper wasn't even calming me as much as usual, so it had to be bothering me more than I thought, since doggy therapy usually worked pretty well.

"You okay?" I was startled out of my thoughts by Ben. He was giving me a concerned look, handsome bronze features illuminated by the bright afternoon sun. I shielded my eyes and mustered a smile.

"Fine, yeah."

He shook his head, not shifting his eyes. "What are you worrying about?"

"I'm not –" I gave up. He knew me too well by now, a thought that brought a wry twist to my mouth. "The Jason thing. Ella convinced me to corner him at his stupid boat party tomorrow and force him to stop."

"How are you going to make that work?" Ben's expression had dropped into hardness. I pursed my lips.

"I… I don't know. I just…" I massaged my forehead. "I want something to be simple in my life."

Ben's gaze smouldered, a fiery fierceness only barely locked up by the stiff way he held his body. "I'm gonna kill him. The way he's treated you –"

"Ben." I leaned to take hold of his arm. He glanced down, eyes not moving up as I continued speaking. "I don't care what they think – that much. Please, just leave it. For me."

Feeling a familiar tickle behind my eyes, I tightened my hand and spoke directly to him now. If we show up as a team, he'll be that much more obstinate.

"Maybe he'll back down more instead," Ben muttered mutinously. A second later, he frowned. "Hey, I can't speak to you the same way."

Because you're not flaring? I prodded mentally. Could feel that Ben was right.

"You weren't when you got mine and Shelton's thoughts there. None of us were."

That reminded me of another incident. A far scarier mental magic, also when I wasn't flaring… Kit. Maybe I accidentally thought that to Ben, and maybe he had access to all my thoughts now too, because he raised his eyebrows as I ran through that weird experience. I was suddenly desperately in need of a distraction from the upcoming island.

Can I try something? I floated to Ben. He eyed me for a second then nodded slowly.

I hesitated and took my hand off his arm. Poked mentally but yep, I'd still be able to talk to him fine. What had I done before again? A little emotional trickery…

I concentrated on my dismay at returning to Candela's horrible labs. Focused on how glad I was that we were leaving. Pulled that feeling of relief at us leaving towards Ben so that there was a brief heat of us mentally touching, my wish that we were leaving wrapping around his mind. It slipped away again immediately, so I leant back and watched for what he'd report.

Ben blinked and narrowed his eyes slightly, shifting his gaze to the sea as he asked, "What did you do?"

I didn't answer for a moment. Then – "Where do you want to tie up on Cole?"

"I –" Ben stopped short. Shot me a sideways glance, and reached for Sewee's rudder. "Why didn't you tell me we were going in the complete wrong direction?"

"We're not, we're not!" I hastily pushed the rudder back to the previous route, mind scattering, and left my hand in front of his. It actually worked. "I just tried, um…"

"Hey, what's going on up there?" Shelton called. "Hiram's about to bust any sec anyways without extra tacking."

I bit my lip before answering. "Sorry, I just brainwashed Ben into thinking we were on the return trip."

"What?"

"What."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. It accidentally happened with Kit yesterday…" A thought struck me and I twisted towards Ben again. "Do you remember me invading your mind?"

"Short answer: no."

"Long answer?"

"Will have to wait, because we're here." I hadn't even noticed us steering into the cove, but fortunately Ben had. I blew out a breath and closed my curiosity to that conversation. It was one to continue later. For now, we had to contend with our bodies' crazy DNA, potential pack-induced seizures, and Chance Claybourne.

"… proximity-related. So if we could have Tory and Ben for testing now, and use Shelton and Hi as a control group." Azad pointed at me, making his gun into a finger. "Remember the order!"

"Um…" I flicked a glance around guiltily, cursing my mind for wandering. "What is it again?"

Azad dropped the finger, looking hurt. "A special noise, yeah!"

Dear goodness, I really was going to have to drag it out of him. Awkward for all of us. "Which is?"

"The containment alarm, Victoria." My shoulders tensed as Chance strolled from the back of the lab towards the front. He was dressed in a white linen suit and pinstripe silk shirt today, as though he was on a break between games at his polo club. But I refused to turn my head to catch sight of him. "My, my, we really aren't paying attention today."

Unfortunate but true. It took a lot of my strength to not scowl, since I was determined to remain aloof of the Claybourne heir this time around.

Trouble was, of course, I was also trying to remain ahead of Madison, Madison's cronies, Whitney, Jason, internal attackers, and external attackers. The many plates I had spinning were proving a few too many to concentrate on at one time, and really, Azad had spent far too long on basic wolfpack structure for me to keep attentive.

"Piss off back to the Playboy Mansion," Ben spat.

"My property, my rules, Blue." Chance and his cold expression swaggered into my peripheral vision. "This is as much for your benefit as mine."

Ben opened his mouth to fight back, but I managed to fire back, leave it. He's a twit we can ignore. Our mental connection from twenty minutes ago was still open, but waning fast. Maybe that's what was draining my energy so quickly.

I was struck by the idea that I might be able to keep the mental connection open indefinitely. That would be a handier method of communication than text for sure. Couldn't be traced, couldn't get told off for it in class… and if that's where all the energy was going… wait, no. I couldn't quite connect that puzzle piece.

"Tory!"

My head jerked. Hi was waving his hands by his face in a 'look-at-me-crazy-person' gesture, but everyone except Ben wore impatient looks on their faces. This time, I did scowl for real.

"I'm having a minor epiphany. Do you have to keep rudely interrupting?"

"Do you always have to be snippy and sarcastic?" Chance fired straight back.

"That's just you that brings those qualities out in me," I told him. I wanted to try out this mind-speaking thing now, but I had a feeling it wasn't going to budge, certainly not with the Virals so on edge around Chance.

Better to try it later. At the séance.

As I brought my gaze front and centre again, I caught Shelton's eye for a second. In that flash, I knew he knew I'd maybe discovered something big, something I wasn't going to push any more here. Something that was more important right now than running this irritating tests one more time.

Our eyes disconnected.

"Hey," he said loudly. I recognised that tone; it was his 'I'm pretending I'm Hi, the master of annoying distractions' voice. "Why are we running these tests for the third time? We already did them twice, switching up the groups. Can't you just tell us the results already?"

Azad twitched, taken aback and unsure of how to answer. Susan's disembodied voice – ensconced as she was in an imaging cubicle – came back instead. "We gotta have three sets of data for a strict pattern."

"This isn't a scientific world," Shelton argued. His fingers twitched like he wanted to tug his earlobe, but admirably, he resisted. "Or not the legal scientific one. We're, er, protected test subjects. And this particular test subject can't spend hours here today."

Hi stared at Shelton with a wounded look and clutched his heart. "You dare to usurp me, the king of annoying interruptions?"

"Can we please just get your conclusions so far?" I tried politely. "We'll repeat the tests later if you need, but for now we're kind of pressed for time." I sent Azad my most winning smile. He shook his head, sending us a lopsided smile of defeat, and went off to retrieve his notes.

Chance, lolling on the bench in front of the one we were seated at, smiled at me lazily. Damn. He'd seen right through our fast-tracking distraction. "I don't suppose you'd mind sharing why you brought out the performing monkeys, Victoria?"

I didn't dignify that with a response. If Chance thought he'd get to me by coming up with meaner insults for my friends, he had another think coming. We'd been making so much progress in acting like mature people that this regression was almost disheartening, but then I remembered we had a hundred problems and Chance was very near the bottom of the priority pile.

More like 'how' I brought them out, Chancey.

Beside me, Ben snorted. I hadn't even realised I'd floated that thought, but it was becoming more and more natural to communicate like this. The energy burn was fading to background noise as this easy-access channel got more and more decluttered.

I couldn't help but laugh a little too, then harder when Chance looked between us with such obvious confusion. He really has no clue… Chance Clueless-bourne.

"Exactly," Ben muttered, grinning. I tried to bite down on my grin to hide it and failed. Better hope Claybourne hadn't noticed our exchange. It wouldn't do to have Chance discovering another Virals secret before we even knew how to work it.

Nevertheless, having Ben hovering at the edge of my consciousness cheered me up enough that I almost didn't mind when Susan followed Azad back to us looking like someone had died in here an hour ago.

"We've got two major potential puzzle pieces to feed back to you today," Azad started. In an uncharacteristically nervous gesture, he constantly shuffled the paper pile in front of him. "The first is what you've been asking for, Shelton. Using mostly data from how we cannot flare properly around each other, our current theory is that Tory's current so-called 'awareness brushes' are a part of a…. 'pack threat awareness' adaption."

Huh. I opened my mouth, but Susan shot me a look and I closed it again, feeling like a naughty child.

"As far as we can see, the flaring difficulties are either due to an adrenaline response or – as I think is more likely – hyperstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. Easy to see why it might have developed in canines, to increase their fight for potential challengers, but for us… it means that the virus has set Chance and I against you."

Interesting. Sensing that speech over, I piped up. "So how come I'm getting the awareness stuff when I'm at school? Or Mag League?" I overtly slid my gaze to Chance. "Anyone making off-the-book social calls we should know about?"

"Oh, you'd know if I was following you, Tory," Chance said, casually examining his cuticles. "No worries there. Azad?"

"I've been here, working on unlocking these very mysteries," he said quickly. "Although there's still a lot I've still to work on with this aggression and territorialism. And social explanations. We'd really like to bring in another team member or two to work on the social side. There's some really interesting time-lapse tests we could run to maybe shed some light on this mind-body disconnection – "

"Stop." I held a hand up. Took a breath. "You know our feelings on external help. Even Chance enlisting your help was a lot more than we wanted."

"I'm also not feeling the science lab slumber party thing," Hi added. "I mean, do Dominoes even deliver here?"

"You say you want progress," Azad argued, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "We are not science machines. All these breakthroughs are happening very fast. Lots of luck, yes? But there is no coherent string of what is happening inside you. For that, we need a team, time-lapse tests, and time."

"We'll think about it." My tone made it clear that was the final offer.

Susan stepped forward now, pushing her glasses up her nose and exchanging a significant glance with Azad that I wished I understood. "So. I've been comparing your chromosomal sequences. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to be at all precise and we might be in the complete wrong ball park because there's no originals to compare against. Even samples from everyone's parents would make it easier. I know it might be difficult to talk your parents into giving samples, but if you could even gather hair samples and bag them up, we might be able to start making some actual progress on identifying the virus. Which is what you wanted originally." Susan raised her eyebrows and observed us.

My thoughts had turned dark. I almost said, we can't always get what we want. Restrained myself just in time.

The boys were probably glancing uneasily at each other, but I stared at my white knuckles until Hi spoke up. "I can get samples. But you don't need us all to do it, right?"

"Yeah," Shelton said quickly, obviously trying to dodge an emotional outburst, "just me and Hi. That's enough, right?"

"Well…" Susan glanced at Azad, obviously trying to work out what we were getting at. "We need as many participants as possible."

"Just try your best. We've got Mr Claybourne's DNA on file from before, so he's in the best position of all. But it doesn't need to be immediate," he added.

I dug my nails into my palm before looking up. Taking control of the topic and closing it. "I'll only be able to get one set of data. We'll have them in time for our next session."

My eyes didn't betray me. I held Azad's gaze for a moment, and he nodded reluctantly. Good; no fight this time. They didn't need any justification from me, and I didn't want to give it to them.

"What I have been able to work out so far," Susan continued, "is that the virus has been taking a while to seat itself in your bodies, but as more and more of your cells reproduce and are replaced with more evolved versions that co-ordinate with each other better, you've been slowly upgrading. Ever since you first caught parvo, really. Viruses evolve quickly, but it's been taking a while for your new cells to catch up, seeing as we think parvo only targeted certain cells." She shrugged. "It's far too early to tell yet. We'll run tests with chemical markers later to truly determine, but for now, symptoms and effects are the priority."

The wolf is more seated in us. I marvelled at this knowledge and couldn't help questioning. "So how has the virus affected the DNA?"

"You remember transcription and translation from two weeks ago?" Right. Hi's machinery analogy. I nodded to Susan and she continued. "We believe that originally the virus entered your nucleolus and attached to chromosomes 7 and 16. C7 is involved in instinct, but C16 is probably more important as it deals with knowledge and how cyclic AMP is produced or altered in neurones… so that's to do with memory. It's extremely complex, though, so I would suggest you spend three or four hours with the internet to understand the intricacies.

"However, this is starting to reach outside my understanding." Susan's voice was even tighter than usual. "In truth, since so many of your biochemical pathways have been affected, we're probably correct to assume that most all of your chromosomes have been altered in some way. You're coping well so far with the changes, and seeing as the evolution seems to concern canine qualities, the mammalian structures are very similar so minimally invasive compared to… well, another Class, like birds or amphibians."

"So it could be dangerous still?" Ben asked gruffly.

Azad paused before answering him. "Well… the changes are still happening inside you. We don't know what's going to happen. So, maybe it will be dangerous."

Oh. I'd kind of assumed we weren't dealing with fatal changes any more, I sent to Ben. He twitched an eyebrow by way of responding with 'yeah, me too'.

It probably shouldn't have surprised me so much that the disease was still so dangerous. After all, what was I expecting – that our continued evolutions would always be safe? No, that's why we were here.

Didn't mean I was happy about it. I made a mental note to do more research into theoretical human-animal hybrids.

The pressure of the ticking clock had just got that much greater.

A/N: hello lovelies! Have a nice long chapter with lots of meat. Like, super-long - the longest yet because MERRY CHRISTMAS o8D (yes that is my attempt at a Santa emoji) - but there's also only one more prewritten chapter... which is scary. Since I've only written 600 words of Catalyst since the last update. (I have too many essays due and Bellarke plunnies!)

Hope it's not too confusing or OOC these days but I'm struggling a little to keep everyone in-character when I can only write 200-300 words per day. THANK YOU for my wonderful 90 reviews (which give me strength to continue) and 20 favourites, as well as 18 follows; I love being able to give something to the fandom and considering how much of a baby-fandom we are, this is phenomenal love, so thank you everyone :')