I thought I already posted this. My bad, fam. But uh, happy Friday the 13th and happy new year lmao!
"And I bleed when I fall down
I'm only human
And I crash and I break down
Your words in my head, knives in my heart
You build me up and then I fall apart"
Human by Christina Perri
On Saturday, Sara and the other juniors of the pack, aside from Isaac and Lydia, stood in line at the school for the PSAT. It wasn't something Sara wanted to do, but it had a semblance of normalcy mixed with it, especially with the current status of their lives. And it was good practice for the SAT and ACT that she'd have to take next year.
"Where's Lydia?" Kira asked as the line moved up one.
"She took it her freshman year," Stiles answered.
Malia gave them a look. "Does that mean I could have taken it some other time?"
"Not for it to matter," Sara said.
Scott's brows furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"The PSAT qualifies you for the National Merit Scholarship," Sara explained, "but you have to be a junior when you take it to get that scholarship. Since I doubt Lydia wouldn't know that, she probably has other scholarship plans."
Boyd shrugged and shook his head. "I tried to tell Isaac this was his only shot to take it. Did he listen? No."
Malia wrung her hands. "I'm not gonna do good."
"'Well,'" Stiles corrected.
"Well, what?" Malia asked, raising a brow at him.
"It's 'do well,' not 'do good.'"
"Oh, god," Malia groaned, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"Okay, okay!" Scott interrupted placatingly. "We're doing this because while we're trying not to die, we still need to live. If I survive high school, I'd like to go to college. A good college."
"It's only three hours," Kira said optimistically with a small smile. "We can survive three hours."
Sara quickly made a shooshing noise. "Stop talking. We don't want to jinx it."
Stiles gave Kira the most incredulous, 'are you kidding me' looks he had ever given, in complete agreement with Sara.
But the damage was already done.
The proctor, a middle-aged man, watched the students closely as they filed into the classroom where the make-up PSAT was taking place, signing in, putting their fingerprints on the top of their test booklets (which a few students found odd at best), and handing over their phones before taking their seats at the various desks.
Malia and Kira were practically sweating in their seats the moment they sat down, and Sara absent-mindedly fiddled with one of the pencils on her desk. Boyd was the only one who wasn't remotely nervous, but it was possible he was just the best at hiding it.
"Please do not open the test booklet until you are instructed to do so," the proctor said, eyeing Stiles who had opened the front page. Stiles quickly closed it and leaned away, acting as nonchalant as possible as though he wasn't the one just called out. "This test is two hours and ten minutes. There will be two twenty-five-minute critical reading sections, two twenty-five-minute math sections, and an essay writing portion that will last thirty minutes."
The proctor then turned to Natalie Martin, Lydia's mom, who was standing nearby as one of the teachers that had volunteered to give up their Saturday.
"There are supposed to be two teachers monitoring this exam," the proctor told her.
"I know," Natalie said in an apologetic tone. "It's Coach. He's not exactly punctual." She held up her phone. "Um, let me just try him again."
As Natalie left the room and the proctor continued with the guidelines, members of the McCall pack shared glances, each wondering where Coach Finstock was. Since he wasn't a punctual person, they'd all understand him being a few minutes late, but the call time for the teachers would have been prior to when the students began showing up for the test, so it wouldn't make sense for him to still not be there, especially when, despite his general outer disposition, he did care about his students and their academics.
Natalie returned a few minutes later, and as she entered the room, she looked at the proctor and said, "I can't find him."
Sara's eyes narrowed, recognizing a lie. Natalie had the same tone as her daughter when they lied. Their voices were slower with a slight uptilt in their eyebrows and a small shake of their heads. Natalie had found Finstock, but something was wrong.
"But Mr. Yukimura is upstairs grading papers," Natalie continued. "Do you want me to try him?"
"We have to start," the proctor said, needing to adhere to national guidelines on when the test needed to begin. "We can ask for his assistance during the first break."
The proctor, using a stopwatch on the desk, pressed the button and announced, "You may now open your test booklets and begin."
Each of the teenagers in the room hurried to open their tests and begin the painful test process.
Boyd, Kira, and Sara answered questions quickly and easily, doing their best not to hesitate or second-guess their answers. Malia soon shed her jacket as her nervous sweating grew worse. Scott concentrated as hard as he could on the questions, drowning out the sounds of heartbeats and breathing with the sound of his own to keep him calm. And Stiles dropped one of his pencils the moment he read a question that stumped him. He didn't remember learning that.
The sounds of pencils scratching filled the room as the proctor and Natalie watched carefully, making sure no one was cheating, until shortly after the halfway point of the first section when one of the students fell out of her seat, drawing the attention of the entire room.
Natalie rushed over, exclaiming, "Sydney! Are you alright?" She helped the girl up.
"I'm okay," Sydney said with a sheen of sweat covering her forehead. "I just got kind of dizzy. . ." Her voice trailed off as she did her best to stay upright, but Natalie's eyes were drawn to Sydney's wrist.
A red and purple rash-like ailment bubbled over the inside of Sydney's pale wrist.
"Sydney, how long have you had this?" Natalie asked, trying to keep her question quiet and private, but the students closest to them heard clearly, as did the ones with enhanced hearing.
"I don't know," Sydney carefully answered.
"Ms. Martin, do I need to stop the test?" the proctor asked, standing at the desk.
Natalie couldn't hide the nervousness in her voice as she said, "No, um, it's fine." She helped Sydney sit down. "Everybody stay in your seats. I'll, um, be back in a minute." She walked to the front of the room, toward the door. Lowering her voice so only the proctor could hear, she told him, "Nobody leaves the room."
Then she left.
Scott felt a growing sense of dread in his stomach as the door closed behind her. He heard Sara's voice in the back of his mind from earlier—We don't want to jinx it.
Too late.
Just a minute later, the students in the classroom heard Natalie yelling out in the hall, and they all rushed to investigate.
Natalie spotted them quickly trying to see what was going on. "Back to your seats!" she ordered. "Now. Please."
But the damage was done. The entire classroom was on edge walking back inside. Then after Scott closed the door behind them, he heard Natalie talking into her phone out in the hall.
"I need the number of the CDC. Yes, the Centers for Disease Control."
The CDC moved in quickly. Well, as quickly as they could since the nearest related office was located in San Francisco. But in less than three hours, the entire school was on lockdown and quarantined from the outside with the CDC working in conjunction with the local health authorities.
One of the classrooms was turned into a quarantined facility with tents set up to isolate the sick. Thankfully, only a few of the students had begun showing any of the same symptoms that Sydney had, and none of those students included members of the McCall pack.
The classroom where the test was supposed to be taken was where the rest of the students were still holed up. Sara was hopped up on her desk and the others were chilling around her, except for Scott who had gone into the other room to ask about what was going on and what they should expect next after the basic CDC quarantine had been fully set up for at least half an hour.
With Scott gone, they were simply chilling and talking. Not like they could be doing anything else.
"Bet they're thinking smallpox," Stiles said.
"Not likely," the proctor chimed in, overhearing what Stiles said while reading what seemed like a magazine or something similar, like a scientific journal. They looked over at him. He gave Stiles the creeps. "Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1979. We've only managed to completely eradicate two viruses in history. The other was rinderpest—it killed cows."
"So we should be comforted by that?" Stiles asked.
"Unless it's something worse," the proctor answered, unfazed.
"Fun," Sara muttered, leaning on her hand after turning away from the strange proctor. "At least we can rule out two possibilities."
"Rinderpest?" Kira repeated, thinking it sounded familiar.
"A virus similar to measles and canine distemper," Boyd said. "It was announced as eradicated just last year."
Stiles gave him a look. "That's an odd thing to know."
Boyd rolled his eyes. "It made the news. I was curious. Leave me alone."
"Yeah, Stiles, leave him alone," Sara teased with a smirk.
Stiles glared at her. "Shut up."
Sara laughed, then the laugh subsided as Malia quietly said, "Whatever it is, they're taking it pretty seriously." She glanced at the windows covered in opaque plastic. "There are a lot of cars and trucks out there." Malia paused, listening to something, then she turned to Stiles. "Your dad's with them."
"I should probably call him," Stiles said, then he stood, walked over to the head desk, and started looking through the basket of phones in envelopes.
"Don't bother," the proctor said, making Stiles stop and look up. "They would have shut off any access to all outside communication by now." He shrugged. "No cell service, no WiFi, no one starting a panic." Stiles and the rest of the pack tensed at his words. "Looks like we're all just going to have to wait here and see what happens."
Sara's eyes narrowed at the proctor, still not having learned anything about him, not even his name. She could plainly see Stiles' discomfort with the man and felt something of a similar vein. And she'd gotten to know Stiles well enough to trust his gut instincts, especially when they matched her own.
With the dead pool floating around, and them being trapped in the school cut off from the outside world, especially from their parents, it didn't bode well.
Scott returned to the room ten minutes later, and less than an hour later, all the students, both sick and healthy, were brought containers of food as it was around lunchtime. The pack mostly ate in silence, and once everyone was done, most of the students took turns going to the bathroom as they, of course, weren't allowed to leave at once. It wouldn't do well for handfuls of students to go missing around the school when they were potentially infectious.
And as the minutes ticked by, Sara realized Scott still hadn't returned. He had intended to come right back, but that had been over thirty minutes prior if Sara's compulsive clock-watching was anything to go by.
A lot could happen in just thirty minutes.
Sara had begun pacing ten minutes prior, her skin crawling with the feeling of being trapped, and Scott wasn't the only one she was worried about. Both Boyd and Malia had begun sweating more than they should, and she recognized the telltale sign of Boyd trying to slow his heartbeat even if he wasn't letting them know he was having trouble.
Stiles watched Sara with growing concern as she paced in front of him. The moment he stood from his seat to ask her what was wrong, she announced, "I'll be back," then she went up to the proctor and asked if she could go to the bathroom.
He waved her by, and Stiles didn't miss the way the proctor watched her every step. How his eyes lingered on the door as it closed. How he turned back to the magazine in his hand and turned the page without reading it. But he wasn't able to think too much about it as Natalie returned to the room and told everyone inside that they'd be getting their blood drawn in about twenty minutes.
Sara stepped out into the hall, took a deep breath, then began to march in search of Scott. She did her best to avoid the CDC personnel that were setting up a table and glanced into classroom windows as she walked until she bumped into Ken.
Ken looked relieved upon seeing her. "Something's wrong with Scott," he said.
"Where is he?" she asked. Ken waved for her to follow, and they ran down to the boy's locker room.
Upon entering, Sara saw Scott hunched against the lockers and breathing heavily. She rushed over and knelt in front of him only to get a glimpse of his eyes flickering from red to brown.
"I-I can't control it," Scott said breathily.
"Anything else?" Sara asked.
He slowly raised his hand to eye level, a tremor throughout the limb. "I can't make them show," he said, referring to his claws or lack thereof. "And my fangs. . ." He trailed off as he opened his mouth enough to show the fangs that were plain as day.
Sara lifted a hand to his forehead and felt the burning skin beneath the layer of sweat. "High fever. Chills. Boyd and Malia are sweating a lot, too. Any chance this is a werewolf flu?" she asked Ken jokingly.
Ken shook his head, unamused, and Sara sighed.
"How long has it been like this?" Sara asked, turning back to Scott.
"The fever came first," Scott answered, breathing slowly. "While I was talking to Sydney." That had been some time ago, and he had kept it to himself, likely thinking that his werewolf abilities would keep him from getting sick. "I ca-came here to get some water before going back after using the bathroom, but I. . . I couldn't."
Sara nodded, stepping away. "Okay, okay, where's your locker?"
Scott gestured to the one he was leaning against and rattled off the combination to the lock as he carefully pushed himself away from it. Sara unlocked the locker, opened the door, and found the water bottle he usually kept in his lacrosse bag. She then went and filled it up then brought it back to him.
"Keep up your fluids," she said, handing him the water bottle. As he drank from it shakily, she grabbed a towel from his locker, wiping away the sweat from his forehead without thinking about it. She then looked at Ken. "We need to figure this out. He can't go out like this. And if he's like this, Boyd and Malia won't be too far behind. They weren't looking good when I left."
"I'll go get them," Ken said. "You two stay here."
As Ken left, Sara sat on the bench with Scott who was trying extra hard to get his eyes to stop flickering, but nothing was working.
Sara reached out to grab his attention, and he met her gaze as she held his hand firmly.
"I don't know how to stop it," he told her. She could still see the fangs peaking through his lips as he spoke.
"I know," she said softly.
"And it's not a mental thing."
"I know."
"And I'm trying—"
"I know, Scott." Sara squeezed his hand comfortingly, feeling him burn hotter than normal. "I know. You're the optimistic one here. Keep your chin up, alright? It's not as easy as keeping your heart rate steady. It's an infection or virus, but whatever this thing is, as long as you keep pushing, you'll get through it."
"Thanks," Scott said just above a whisper. He sighed. "Kira really did jinx it, huh?"
Sara tried to stop the laugh in what should have been a tense moment but couldn't, and Scott joined her. And for a brief second, it felt nice.
The others filed into the locker room ten minutes later. Malia and Boyd walked in weakly. Malia was more pale than usual, and Boyd had sweat covering his forehead. The members of the pack who weren't displaying characteristics of illness began helping the ones who were, giving them water, helping them center their breathing, and trying to use cold, damp towels to help with the fevers, but nothing worked. It only continued.
By then, Scott's breathing was getting better, but his eyes were still flickering back and forth every few seconds.
"It's still happening," Sara told him.
Malia held up her hands after taking them from the pockets they were hiding in, showing her claws on display for the rest of the pack to see. "I can't make them go back."
They all looked at Boyd, and without a word, he showed his teeth and how his fangs weren't receding. But he didn't want to talk with them out. It didn't feel right.
"Obviously, the virus is affecting the three of you in a way it won't hit any human being," Ken said.
"You guys have to stay out of sight," Stiles added. "We have to quarantine you from the quarantine."
"Yeah, but where?" Kira asked. "I mean, what if they get violent, like on the full moon?"
Scott shook his head, leaning on his leg that was propped up on the bench. "We shouldn't stay in here. Not in the locker room."
"That doesn't leave many options," Sara said, crossing her arms. "Classrooms won't hold you, and the basement has too many exits. And they started keeping the boiler room locked after finding blood after our last attempt at holding werewolves there, not that we'd make it there with the stairs being right next to the CDC setup."
Scott nodded slowly, thinking of other options. "We need something secure. Somewhere nobody can find us."
Stiles realized before anyone else. "The vault." Scott quickly looked up at him, and Stiles repeated, "The Hale vault."
"The Hales always have an escape route, like their house," Scott agreed. "There has to be another way in."
They moved into Coach Finstock's office after Stiles pulled out the blueprint of the school that he had left in his lacrosse locker leftover from Mischief Day the previous semester. He laid it out on the desk in front of them and pointed.
"This is where the school sign is, so the vault's got to be right about here," Stiles said, moving his hand.
"I suppose, if there's a second entrance, it would probably be accessible from the basement," Ken said.
"It's probably somewhere in this hallway, west corridor—" Stiles cut off as he stumbled while pointing at the blueprint. Ken quickly helped right him. "Whoa." Stiles pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to see the same rash that had been on Sydney's wrist.
"It's happening to you, too," Ken said. "You're getting sick. You all are."
Sara and Kira looked at him in disagreement. "I don't feel sick," Kira said.
"Seriously lacking the fever and rash here, Ken," Sara added.
Ken hesitated, but whatever thought made him pause, he pushed through it. "I think it's affecting you two differently. Neurologically." Ken straightened, pulling something from his back pocket. "I found your test answers in a pile with the others."
He opened the folded paper and set it in front of them. It was only Kira's test answers, but once Sara laid her eyes on it, she knew hers likely looked the same. Instead of the answer bubbles being filled in, colored in circles dotted other parts of the page. None of the actual bubbles had been filled in.
They were all sick, and none of them were getting better. And if all the supernaturals were sick, then it wasn't an ordinary illness. They had been targeted by yet another assassin.
Together, the pack made their way through the halls and down to the basement, carefully avoiding running into the CDC while Ken returned to the chaos to play it by ear and hopefully get a message to the people on the outside, to anyone who'd be able to help them.
Once in the corridor that Stiles had indicated, they began looking around for any sign of another entrance to the vault. Feeling walls, opening doors, looking around shelves, but no luck, until Stiles noticed something behind a set of shelves covered in random things.
"Hey, guys?" Stiles said, grabbing their attention. "Over here."
Scott helped him move the shelving unit out of the way. On the wall was a carved triskelion—the symbol of the Hale family, among other things. Then at the center of the triskelion, similar to the entrance outside, was a circular Celtic knot.
"Look at the cracks in the wall," Stiles pointed out. Then he gestured to the middle piece. "It's like the entrance outside. It only opens with claws—" He paused, meeting Scott's eyes. "Anyone's claws, right?"
"Um," Scott began, hesitating, then he turned around. "Malia, can you try?"
Everyone knew what he was doing except for Malia, but that didn't mean she wasn't skeptical. "Why me?" she asked.
"I don't have control," Scott answered, holding up his hand to show his distinct lack of claws while Malia's were already out.
Malia glanced between Scott and Stiles, still confused about their demeanor. "Okay, I'll do it." Stiles was quick to nod in relief, but Malia wasn't done. "But first, tell me what you've been hiding from me."
Everyone around her tensed, but she was solely focused on Stiles, her boyfriend, and Scott, her alpha. Boyd and Sara shared an amused look, wondering what Stiles and Scott were going to pull out of their asses this time as they continued to avoid the subject.
"I know you think you're trying to protect me," Malia continued during their silence, "but I can handle it." Her expression read 'obviously' but that didn't mean everyone was jumping to admit she was adopted. When they still made no move to actually answer her question, Malia jumped the gun with her own theory. "I know I'm on the list."
Stiles looked up in surprise, Kira's shoulders lost their tension, and Scott nodded toward Stiles for him to just roll with it.
". . . Yes," Stiles drew out.
Sara met Scott's eye and shook her head in disappointment, so he turned away to not be on the receiving end of the expression.
"So how much?" Malia asked.
"How much what?" Stiles countered.
"How much am I worth?"
"Three million," Scott answered.
Malia looked away, taking that amount to heart as she mulled it over.
"Are you okay?" Stiles asked, seeing the way her expression had changed and also seeing if she'd continue to buy their huge freaking lie.
"Yeah," Malia said easily, looking back up at them. "Scott's worth twenty-five, Sara six, Kira four—They'll take you guys out way before me." She moved around Stiles to open the vault door.
Meanwhile, Sara tilted her head at Malia's line of logic while Kira frowned and Stiles and Scott both blinked in surprise.
"It's progress," Stiles whispered to them. "It's progress."
Stiles and Scott moved away from the wall to watch Malia place her claws into the divots of the stone. It crackled with supernatural magic as the stone scraped while turning and sliding into the wall to open. Then as Malia dropped her hand, the wall began to slide open, showing the inside of the Hale Family vault. They walked inside and the door closed behind them, locking them inside.
Kira and Sara looked around the vault at the various things inside while Stiles and Malia found blankets and Scott and Boyd settled in for the long haul.
Kira's eyes were caught by a jar on one of the shelves. It looked familiar to her, filled with dried purple mushrooms.
Sara saw what she was looking at from the other side of the shelves and said, "That looks like what my mom uses for tea sometimes."
"That's why it looks familiar," Kira said in a breathy tone, glad to realize what was on the tip of her tongue. "Reishi. My mom uses this for tea, too. It reeks."
Sara chuckled as she drew closer. "Yeah, she's tried to get me to drink some on occasion, but one whiff of it and I want to gag. Satomi likes it, too. So did Talia Hale. Maybe it's an old people thing."
Kira laughed along with her. "Maybe we should open it?"
"I'm not sure I want a terribly-smelling mushroom to be my last memory if I'm going to die."
Kira snorted and set the jar back down, turning away to look at the other cool and interesting things the Hales had locked away, but Sara continued looking at the jar for a few seconds, something nagging in the back of her mind.
"Wait, isn't reishi what your mom used to get the nogitsune's fly out of your dad?" she asked.
"I almost forgot about that," Kira said, picking up an old book and flipping through the pages. "I wonder what else it can be used for."
"Yeah. . ." Sara trailed off before her train of thought was broken by a sharp thud of Stiles closing a crate.
It didn't take long for the group of teenagers to grow bored after that.
Based on Boyd's watch, they had been in there for at least an hour. Stiles leaned against a structural column while sitting on the floor with Malia laying in his lap taking a nap. Boyd rested against one of the shelving units, also nodding off, and Kira sat next to him, picking at her shoelaces. Scott sat on a crate that Sara had her back against.
"If I knew we'd be stuck with nothing to do, I'd have brought some cards," Sara said off-handedly. She heard Scott's quiet huff of amusement above her.
Stiles brushed aside a strand of Malia's hair and said, "You know, this is where it all started. That's where the money was." He gestured to a large black safe next to Scott. "One hundred and seventeen million in bearer bonds."
"How do you even change bearer bonds into cash?" Kira wondered.
"Bank, I guess," Stiles said. "They just let it sit here the whole time, collecting dust." They all could hear the mild disgust in his voice. "You know, bearer bonds are basically extinct?"
"Why does it matter?" Boyd asked. "Where are you going with this?"
Stiles looked at him as though the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "You know how many problems that money could solve?"
"For you?" Kira clarified.
"Me and my dad," Stiles said, his voice grave. "The Eichen House and MRI bills are killing him."
"My mom does this thing," Scott said while scratching at his arm. "She writes down all the items in our budget, how much they cost, and then she adds them all up and figures out how long we have until. . . we'd lose the house."
It was quiet and tense for a few moments until Boyd added, "Sounds like my dad. He tries to hide the bills from me, so I can't see them, but. . ."
"But you find them anyway," Scott finished softly, the same going for him. Boyd nodded.
"Me too," Stiles said. "If we. . . If you had some of the one hundred and seventeen million, what would you do with it?" Stiles looked directly at Boyd for an answer, avoiding Scott's look of warning.
"Depends," Boyd said with a shrug.
Stiles' eyes narrowed and his eyebrows pinched. "On what?"
"If someone had to die to get it." Boyd's words filled the air with tension as death was a very real possibility for any of them. "If we were able to get the money from the person who stole it, and we didn't want to give it back to Peter, then yeah, I'd help my dad with the bills, pay off the house and his credit card debt, maybe get him a better car. . . But if we got that money from one of the assassins who killed someone on the list to get it, then I'd want that money to go to their families."
"Not back to Derek?" Scott asked.
"I thought the money was Peter's," Sara said. "Not Derek's."
Scott shrugged. "I thought it was both."
"No, Derek used most of his money," Boyd said. "He told me and Isaac when he moved into the loft that he had bought the entire building. What's left of his goes to property taxes for the old Hale property."
"I thought the county took that over," Stiles said.
Boyd shook his head. "No, he just had the house bulldozed so it wasn't a safety hazard per the county's guidelines. He wouldn't sell it back to the county without talking to Cora and Peter first."
"And Laura's buried on the property, like the others," Sara said. "It's their home."
Whatever the case, Stiles got his answer from Boyd, and for the most part, he was siding with Scott whether he knew it or not with the verdict being they weren't using the money that was hiding under Scott's bed in Garrett's gym bag. Sara knew there was a reason for Stiles' line of questioning, but she didn't care enough to ask more about it. It didn't seem like a good time for that line of questioning, especially not with everyone around.
Another three hours passed of them being locked inside the vault, and everyone was only getting worse. If everything had gone to plan, they would have been done with the test way before then, but instead, the fevers were growing worse, Stiles' rash had spread, and Sara and Kira were having trouble thinking and staying upright.
Eventually, Scott and Stiles got up and went to the entrance of the vault they had come in and began talking in hushed tones. Kira was helping Boyd sit up as his breathing grew haggard. Malia laid down on the wool blankets that Stiles had set out earlier. And Sara curled up against the crate she was sitting against, trying to use her abilities to keep warm in the cold basement vault, but they weren't working, and she hadn't worn a jacket that morning.
Sara barely noticed Stiles saying goodbye to Malia and leaving the vault. What she did notice was Scott sliding into the spot next to her, his warm, feverish shoulder pressing up against hers. The warmth was as comforting as his presence. She relaxed next to him.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
"'m cold," she murmured, still hugging her knees. "Can't get warm."
Slowly, Scott reached around her, setting his arm against her back, and she shuddered at the sudden warmth. They both shivered for different reasons. Where Sara couldn't get warm, Scott couldn't get cold, but leaning against each other at that moment helped.
"We're going to die, aren't we?" Scott asked, watching as Boyd held Kira close and Malia curled in on herself on the floor. He kept his voice low so only Sara would hear him.
Sara picked up her head, facing him. "Why are you asking me that?"
"Because you're the only one who won't beat around the bush." Scott rubbed her shoulder with his thumb. "You disguise it as pessimism, but you're really just being honest."
"It's a sad day when the optimist wants to hear the harsh truth." Sara slumped against him. "Yeah, I think we are. No one knows what this virus is or how to cure it, only that it isn't normal. The only thing we can do is keep the douche from getting the money."
Under better circumstances, he would've loved holding her, and the words slipped out before he could re-think. "It's one of the things I like about you."
"I—what?" She wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.
"I should stop pretending it isn't obvious," he said, though he didn't meet her questioning gaze. Instead, he chose to stare at the floor in front of them. And neither moved away. "I haven't exactly hidden it well between the stammering, awkwardness, jealousy. . . I'm pretty sure everyone knows at this point, even you even though you've never said anything about it."
Sara picked at the loose threads from a hole in the knee of her jeans. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"If we're going to die, might as well not let that be the thing I regret not doing."
Sara understood that sentiment. They didn't have their phones, so it wasn't like they could call their families to say 'love you' and 'goodbye' which didn't leave many options for last words. One thing they could do was be honest with themselves and the others in locked in the vault with them.
"I wanted to kiss you on the roof on Halloween," he said.
She already knew that. She'd known that the whole time. She'd known he liked her for ages. She's pretty certain he had a brief kid crush on her in freshman year when she was tutoring him. But hearing it all out loud was different. Like the dead pool. It was one thing to suspect or know; it was another to have confirmation.
"I almost let you," she admitted.
Scott turned to her. "Really?"
Sara shrugged. "As long as we're being honest here." He could understand that, and she had more to admit if this was going to be potentially her only chance to. "And with the whole Brett thing. . . It was hypocritical of me not to be honest about it, but I didn't want you to know. I didn't care about everyone else knowing. I figured Stiles or Isaac would tell you if I let either of them know."
His eyes softened while looking at her. "Why didn't you want me to know?" he asked.
Sara hesitated, almost not wanting to answer, but she felt like she should, like he deserved the honesty. "I think part of me thought you'd look at me differently."
"I wouldn't have," Scott said without hesitation, and she picked up her gaze from the floor to meet his eyes. His soft, warm eyes have always provided comfort. "I don't. I like you, but it doesn't matter. I just want you to be happy."
She felt her chest clench at his words, but she didn't quite know why. Was it the virus working its way through her system? Was it the situation they found themselves in finally fully hitting her? Was it the honesty in his words? Or the emotion? Was it the way he looked at her with complete confidence in his feelings?
Or was it the way no one had said that to her before?
Sara set her head on his shoulder, nestled in the crook of his neck, and her eyes closed to rest and cherish the company she had. Scott's arm around her tightened as he held her closer, never wanting to let go. Both believed it wasn't such a bad way to die, falling asleep in each other's embrace.
Everyone hiding in the vault could feel themselves growing weaker by the minute. It would only be a matter of time before whatever they had finished the job.
In the dead silence, Scott's ears picked up the rustling of paper, and he looked up to see Malia sitting up and pulling out a folded sheet of paper from Stiles' coat pocket.
"Malia. . ." Scott called out as the realization of what the paper said set in. When she didn't respond while unfolding the paper, he tried again. "Malia?"
Boyd and Kira, who had been resting as well, began to stir at the sound of Scott's voice. Malia looked up from the paper, facing his general direction, but her eyes didn't meet his.
"I can't see," Malia said, panic clouding her voice. "I can't see anything!"
Scott's breathing picked up as he looked over to Boyd and Kira to ask if the same thing was happening to them, but as Scott moved his head in such a quick manner, his vision began to blur.
"What's happening to us?" Boyd asked, his deep voice slurred.
"I can't. . ." Kira mumbled, doing her best to sit up. "I can't see."
Scott gently extracted his arm from around Sara who quickly picked up her head and asked in an anxious tone, "What?"
"Sara?" Scott said in a low voice as what he could see of her expression shifted into one of terror, and he knew that she had lost her sight as well.
Sara picked up her arm, reaching out slowly. "Scott?"
As Scott grabbed her hand to show that yes, he was still right there, his vision finished melting into blurred darkness.
With such a drastic change and deterioration of their health, they all knew that it would be over soon whether they wanted it or not. Their bodies were shutting down. None of them could gather the strength to stand. They just wanted to close their eyes and succumb.
Until Scott heard Stiles outside the vault.
"Hey, Scott?" Stiles's voice called through the wall. Scott could barely hear him as he tried his best to crawl over to let him in. "Scotty?" From the other side, Stiles hit the wall. "In the vault, in there with you—it's called reishi mushrooms."
Sara's ears pricked at the name, opening her eyes again.
"Scott?" Stiles tried again, slamming on the wall. "Scott, open the door! It's in there with you! It's in a jar. It's on one of the shelves."
Sara pushed herself up onto her knees. "I. . . I know where. . . that is."
"Scott! Scott, can you hear me?"
"Sara?" Scott's weak voice called from the vault door.
"The dried mushrooms," Kira weakly muttered, also remembering. ". . . that jar."
"We saw it. . ." Sara trailed off as she turned, remembering it was on the shelf directly behind her.
Sara felt the bottom shelf in front of her, and summoning her last bit of strength, shifted her eyes from brown to orange as she used the shelves to pull herself up and reach the glass jar that glowed under the eyes of a supernatural creature.
Her fingers and her arm felt heavy as she reached for the shelf, trying to grasp it, but when they didn't work, she hit it as hard as she could to shove it off the shelf, sending it hurtling to the floor and breaking open as she collapsed to the floor. The mushroom spores released into the air, aided by the air vents pumping a small breeze to spread the spores around, allowing them all to breathe in the cure.
Being closest to the broken jar, Sara gasped as her lungs sprang to life, stronger than they had been in hours, and color blossomed before her eyes.
Sight returned to pack and the fever died down faster than the onset of the virus. In less than a minute, they could feel their total strength had returned.
They were cured.
Scott stood and opened the vault door to let Stiles in as Sara and Kira hugged, both ecstatic.
"It was the stupid mushrooms," Sara said. "Of course, it was the stupid mushrooms."
"I'm never going to complain about the horrible mushrooms again," Kira replied, shaking her head.
Boyd laughed at their exchange and wrapped his arms around them both. "I've reached a new record for escaping death."
Both Kira and Sara shoved him away, making him laugh.
"That is not funny," Kira told him, delving into a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
"You're terrible," Sara said with a grin.
Behind them, Stiles rushed to Malia after a long, desperate hug with Scott. Upon reaching his girlfriend, wanting to hug and kiss and hold her and tell her he was so glad to have her and all about why there was blood all over him, she pushed him away, holding the paper that had been in the jacket he had lent her to keep her warm while he was gone.
It wasn't just any paper. It was the third part of the dead pool. It was the part that showed her name. Her real name. Hale.
He'd known about it for how long and decided not to tell her? She didn't appreciate that. Malia walked right passed him, ignoring Stiles and everyone else.