Thanks for reading! Enjoy! This chapter does have a lot of canon type stuff in it but I tried to make it AU where I could!
I do not own Teen Wolf.
"Stiles." Lydia hissed, eyes huge.
"Lydia, don't move."
She didn't even breathe.
He couldn't help but stare at the metal contraption, feeling the fear set in that at any second it could close around Lydia's bare leg, nothing to deter it from ripped through her flesh.
Her breaths were shortening in her panic and she looked to the sky for a distraction.
"Look for a warning label."
"A warning label?"
"Instructions on how to disarm it." she clarified, a touch of frustration in her tone.
Stiles was confused. "Why the hell would they put instructions on the bottom of a trap?"
"Because animals can't read!" Lydia said exasperatedly.
A simple concept yet he hadn't thought of that. Intrigued, he lay down next to the trap, searching for some sort of information.
Seeing the patch of red, he leaned closer, eyes catching on to the white lettering.
He knew it was what he was looking for, but none of it made sense.
"Lydia, we've got a problem." he admitted. "I can't read either."
Lydia exhaled slowly, trying to appear calm. "You don't need the instructions. When was the last time you used instructions, am I right? You don't need them because you are too smart to waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out. Stiles, all I've heard since I learned about your involvement in the supernatural stuff is that you're the one who always figures it out. You figured out the issues with the printer that time too! And you thought about the tree I've been drawing to figure out that I've been drawing the same thing. You've used your cleverness plenty of times since then for academic and personal reasons. So you can do it. Figure. It. Out."
Stiles stared at her in surprise. He hadn't been expecting such a passionate speech. He didn't know that she thought any of that about him. He knew they did academic stuff together, like homework and assignments, but he was surprised by her attention to his problem-solving.
She was right though. He had a knack for research, and he did seem to pick up on subtler clues before others, sometimes things just seemed to click in his brain. He just had to focus and he could figure this out.
He noticed the stringy grass covering part of the metal. It was a circular knob that looked to be connected to the spring portion of the trap. That had to mean something.
But which way to turn it?
He thought back to the instruction he read before. Or failed to read. He scrunched his eyes shut, trying to remember exactly how the whole label was displayed. Trying to re-read may give him a whole new set of letter combinations. He remembered each word individually, trying to think of which might indicate a direction. 'WCIOCSKEL'. He let it mull around his brain for a minute.
Clockwise.
"Okay. Here we go."
With a quick jerk of his wrist, he turned the knob to the right.
Lydia squealed and jumped away, Stiles leaping up to catch her from toppling over. He pulled her in close, her breathing slowing to a more normal rate.
"Thank you." she whispered, her cheek against his.
"We really need to stop putting you in these dangerous situations. My heart can't take the stress."
She giggled as she relaxed in his hold, leaning her head against his collarbone, the front of her body now pressed to the front of his. "I'm sorry. If it helps, we can consider it pay back from you scaring me this morning."
Lydia felt his posture change, and she knew she had said the wrong thing.
"I don't mean that I was scared due to your mental state. I just don't like seeing you so upset. I had no idea you had been going through so much. When Allison told me everything last night… I felt awful for not knowing."
Stiles let her go, brushing his hair back off his sweaty forehead.
"I… well, I kind of kept some of it from everyone… I swear it wasn't personal."
She nodded. "It's okay."
"We'll talk later, okay? When we're not in the middle of the woods with eavesdropping werewolves around…" Stiles said sheepishly. He didn't mind confiding in Lydia—he would just rather leave the rest of the pack out of his deepest thoughts and fears.
Out of the blue, there was a resounding howl that echoed through all the trees.
"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Stiles said, enthusiasm switching immediately at the sound of his best friend in full wolfed out form. "Unless he's doing so without control and that means everyone is screwed….And damn, I completely forgot about Isaac getting hurt…"
"You can decipher their different howls?"
He nodded, pulling her by the hand towards the noise, his cell up to his ear.
"Allison? Hey, what's going on?"
She sounded exasperated. "Isaac got his leg caught in a bear trap. He's doing okay. Scott's alpha howl seemed to give him renewed strength and he broke out of it. Derek's patching him up to help the healing."
"Scott managed to do the alpha howl? Did he transform fully?"
"Yeah, actually, he did. And back. Derek coached him on the howl but I think hearing his beta in distress helped him focus or something."
"Makes sense."
"What about you guys? Where are you?"
"Well, Lydia also stepped on a bear trap—"
"Oh my god! Where are you guys?! Is there an ambulance on the way?" Allison immediately panicked, which wasn't really typical of her. Her time as a hunter had taught her to be calmer in a crisis, but clearly hearing that Lydia was hurt had thrown that out the window.
"She's fine. She didn't set it off. I managed to disarm it. We're heading to you guys now."
"Christ, Stiles, next time lead with that, will you?!"
He chuckled. "Sorry, warrior princess."
"I think I see you guys. And… are you holding hands?" Allison added slyly.
"Hanging up now." Stiles said with the roll of his eyes, clicking off his phone.
Stiles and Lydia rejoined the group, Allison hugging Lydia upon sight and Stiles checking on Scott.
"How's your leg?" he asked Isaac, seeing the bloody bandages.
"Healing. It'll be fine." he replied gruffly, clearly still in a decent amount of pain.
Stiles nodded. "I'll have to let my dad know people are still trapping out here. Let's hope it's not Mr. Tate again."
"Well, he has Malia back now, so I don't think he really cares about catching the 'coyote' anymore."
Lydia looked up at the name, and Stiles corrected his throat awkwardly. "So, did anyone find anything?"
"Nothing." Derek volunteered unenthusiastically.
"Well, it was a long shot. At least we tried." Scott said.
His eyebrows furrowed as his phone rang.
Stiles jumped in surprise when his did the same thing.
"It's my mom."/"It's my dad." they said in unison.
Greeting their parents, the others watched in curiosity.
One glance at Scott and Stiles knew they were getting the same news.
Stiles immediately went into detective mode. "The shrapnel bomber? Nearby? So you have no idea where he is? Or where he's heading? Won't he need a hospital to stitch him up?"
Scott, meanwhile, was giving a similar questionnaire with his mom, but less targeted towards the outside party. "But are you okay? Did he hurt you? What did he say?"
Stiles exhaled. "Dad, yes, I'll tell them. We'll be fine. Just… be careful, okay? Yeah, love you too. Bye."
The others looked on earnestly, clearly curious on what the hell was going on. Scott hung up the phone a moment later.
Stiles spoke for the both of them. "You guys remember the stories about William Barrow? Crazy guy who walked onto a school bus and set off a shrapnel bomb that killed four teenagers and caused the other to lose his legs? He needed emergency surgery so he was let out of jail last night to be seen at Beacon Hills Hospital. They were scheduled to do the surgery this morning. But they didn't get to finish it. A tumour in his stomach filled with…"
He paused, looking at Lydia, eyes widening in realization.
"Uh, Stiles? Filled with what?" Allison asked.
"Sorry… um, tumour full of flies burst open, distracting the surgery team, and he literally sat up and sliced the surgery doctor in the neck before hightailing out of there. They're trying to find him but they don't even know where to look. My dad wants us to all go home and stay inside, keep safe."
Everyone waited for him to explain further, looking back and forth between him and Lydia, but sensing he wasn't going to give, Scott jumped in.
"My mom said she did his pre-op exam last night when he was admitted. And he said he killed those people because their eyes were glowing."
They all caught on instantly, even Lydia. "Werewolves."
"We can't let them look for this guy on their own. He's dangerous." Scott said.
"We don't even know what he escaped for. Does he have some sort of unfinished business?" Allison asked, trying to think back to what she learned in school. She hadn't been living in Beacon Hills when the guy was around.
"Maybe he wants to relive the glory days. Do it again." Isaac suggested.
"You mean bomb a high school bus? There's more than one high school in the area. We'll have to split up."
"My mom works at the Beacon Hills high school. She's there right now. Classes are in session for another few hours." Lydia said, trying not to panic.
Stiles touched her shoulder. "We'll keep her safe. Don't worry."
"We'll need to move fast. How long ago did he escape?"
"Probably about half an hour. My mom had to answer a bunch of police questions, and well, Stiles' dad was the one asking them." Scott explained.
Allison crossed her arms. "So, we'll split up and go to the high schools in the area? Try to find him before he does any damage? Shouldn't they evacuate the schools?"
"They won't want to panic everybody unless they have to." Stiles interjected.
Lydia spoke up. "Bombing a bus after being locked up for years might be too mediocre. If he's as sick as he sounds, he likely wants to make it worth the trouble of getting thrown in prison for longer. He might want to level the whole school, or wherever he thinks the glowing eyes people are. He's probably not oblivious to how overpopulated your guys' high school was with the supernatural, especially with all of the unsolved cases Stiles' dad has had over the years that revolved around there."
Stiles tried to hide how impressed he was. Lydia really paid attention. His dad had mentioned his series of unsolved cases at some point over the Thanksgiving weekend when she asked about his job, but of course she was clever enough to link her new knowledge to that now. Some human things were unsolved, but the majority related back to the supernatural.
"I'm sure my dad and the rest of the department are going to check out the high schools, and the first place they'll go is the school buses. We need to scour the whole area. Hopefully catch him before he gets anything going."
"He'll likely hang around to watch his disaster unfold. Even if he has set things up, he won't disappear, just hide." Lydia retorted. "Not anywhere obvious either. Somewhere unpopulated, like the basement."
"We'll need to make sure that when he is found, we get everyone out. No matter what the police are doing."
"True. We can't know what he's planning or how far he's gone. If he's there at all, there's a chance he's already planted something."
The rest were watching the two go back and forth, amused by the detective banter.
Oblivious, Stiles nodded. His phone beeped. He pulled it out to see a text from his dad.
Barrow spotted near Beacon Hills High. You better be home.
"My dad says Barrow's been seen near Beacon Hills. Maybe we should forget splitting up and hurry up and get over there."
They all stared at him.
He pushed his phone back in his pocket. "Okay, fine, we can still split up, but I think we should have more people with supernatural powers at Beacon Hills if that's where he likely is…"
"No. Stiles. You just read that text." Allison explained slowly, waiting for it to sink in.
He paused, catching on. "Holy shit."
"We should go. We'll figure out the rest of the plan on the way." Scott said, but he was smiling broadly, clearly happy that his best friend's dyslexia might be behind them.
Lydia linked her arm with Stiles' as they made their way back to his jeep, and he couldn't keep the smile off his face either.
Arriving at the school, it looked like a normal day. No extra security, no screaming mob of panicked students exiting the building, nothing out of the ordinary.
"Okay, let's split up."
Lydia's hand reached for Stiles' without her even thinking about it, and he smiled and linked their fingers together.
"Let's go check on your mom." he said quietly, knowing she was more worried than she was letting on and that she needed the visual reassurance that she was fine.
Lydia smiled bashfully, nodding. There really wasn't much they could do if confronted by Barrow, besides run and hide behind their more well-equipped friends.
"Text me if you find anything." Stiles told the others, leading Lydia away.
They headed down the hall, Stiles remembering his dream from the previous night. Classes were in session, so all doors were closed, nothing out of the ordinary.
"She's in there." Lydia said, peeking through the window in the door.
Her mom was addressing the class, calling on people in their seats, nodding in approval as they relayed their answers. All of them oblivious to the potential danger looming.
The principal came around the corner accompanied by the town sheriff. Thankfully, their eyes were on each other as they conversed.
"Shit, there's my dad. Quick. We need to hide." Stiles hissed, pulling her into the nearest open room.
It happened to be the boys' locker room. It was empty.
Lydia was smirking. "Let me guess. He probably wouldn't be too impressed that you ignored his demand that you go straight home and stay there."
"…yeah."
He looked around the room, glimpses of his dream in his mind's eye.
"What is it?" Lydia clearly noticed his distraction.
"I was here in my dream last night. Trapped in a locker. At the time, I thought I had been sleep walking and ended up here. But then the dream changed."
Lydia could tell how freaked out he was. Witnessing his full blown panic attack earlier had been proof enough.
She wanted to ask him more about his dreams, about the things he said during his panic attack, but now wasn't the time. They needed to focus on finding the psychotic prison escapee.
"Stiles?"
His expression was still troubled, even more so than before.
He shook his head, thinking hard. "This sounds stupid… but being here, at the school, feels so familiar. Not, you know, because I was here in my dream, or because I spent four years going here. I feel like I've actually been here recently. That maybe that's what prompted the dream last night."
"Well, is that possible? That you might be sleep walking or something?"
Stiles mulled it over. He hadn't woken up in an odd place, besides within his dreams, but he had had those random blackouts. He tried to remember when he had his last one, but it was like trying to remember when you last forgot something you didn't remember forgetting.
"I don't know. It's probably nothing, just my brain getting even more scrambled than before. We should be focusing on Barrow. He's the imminent danger we have to worry about right now."
Lydia nodded. "Stiles?"
He turned to her from the doorway after checking that the coast was clear.
"I appreciate you not saying anything earlier, about the buzzing to the others. I really thought there was a fly, but thinking back, I never did feel anything actually around me. Just heard the noise. I wouldn't have been mad if you told them, but I can't lie. I feel like a freak."
He stepped closer, reaching out for her. "Hey, you're not a freak—"
"I still hear it, Stiles. It's been louder since we got here." she admitted. "I don't get what's happening to me. But I feel like this means something. Am I crazy for thinking that?"
He smiled. "Not at all. I think you're right."
"So… what do we do?"
Stiles pulled out his phone, texting a quick 'where are you' to Scott. "Let's see if the others have found anything. They should've texted me, but we'll meet up with them and see if they have any new ideas. If not, I'll call my dad, see how the investigation is going."
"I don't think you'll have to call him…"
"Why not?"
"Because he's coming over to us right now."
Stiles whipped around and shrunk slightly at the look on his father's face. He decided to meet him halfway, Lydia staying behind to give them some privacy for what would no doubt be a tense conversation.
"Stiles… I swear to god…"
"Dad, before you say anything—"
"No. I don't even want to hear it! Do you actually enjoy giving me a heart condition? I told you to stay inside today, to stay safe, and you actually join the crime scene! Where there is an escaped bomber." he hissed as quietly but as furiously as possible.
The other deputies were heading out of the front doors, and Stiles caught sight of a familiar FBI agent.
"Seriously? He's helping?"
"He was the one who directed Barrow to the Beacon Hills Hospital, so yeah, he's helping."
"So you guys are leaving? Why are you leaving?"
The Sheriff sighed. "There's nothing here. An eye witness puts Barrow at the train station."
"Dad, he's here. Lydia knows it."
"Did she see him?" his dad demanded, about to pull out his radio to order them to stay.
"Well, no, not exactly. Not at all, actually. But she has a feeling. She has a supernatural feeling. She can sense… things. And she still hears the buzzing."
"Excuse me? The buzzing?"
Stiles sighed exasperatedly. "Look, she's a psychic or something. She's been drawing the Nemeton since before, and she found Heather's necklace, and—"
"Stiles, I seriously don't have time for this. I'm not saying I don't believe, but I've got to go with eye witness over psychic. Now get your ass back home."
Before Stiles could say anything else, he caught sight of Agent McCall doubling back, clearly impatient for the Sheriff to join the rest.
Stiles wanted to flip him off, but figured that wouldn't help his case with his dad any, so he headed back to Lydia instead.
"Why are they leaving?!" Lydia whispered, eyes wide.
"They've got an eye witness placing him elsewhere." Stiles said bitterly.
"Barrow HAS to be here! That sound? The buzzing I've been hearing? It's getting louder."
"How loud?"
Lydia paused to listen and cringed immediately. Instead of a single fly, it sounded like a swarm. An angry, voluminous swarm.
Stiles checked his phone. Scott had responded.
Me, Derek, and Isaac are scouring the basement. Allison and Kira were checking out the school buses since they're parked out back. So far, no scent, no evidence of him being here at all.
"They're in the basement. Allison and Kira are checking out the buses." Stiles relayed.
Lydia stopped walking. "Stiles. Did Barrow make that shrapnel bomb himself?"
"Yeah, I think so. He was an electrical engineer." he replied, stopping too, knowing she was coming to a conclusion of some sort.
She exhaled slowly. "All the werewolves, all the ones with the glowing eyes, are in the basement… near the school's boiler room."
It only took a second for Stiles to catch on.
"An engineer could use the boiler room to blow up the whole school."
Lydia nodded. "We have to get them out of there."
"We have to get everyone out."
"How do we do that? The last bell won't ring for another twenty minutes."
Stiles knew that the police were gone now, so no hope for help from them, although that was doubtful on a good day.
"We break the rules."
Taking a few steps, he reached up for the red fire alarm, pulling down.
Ringing blared through the halls, and the scraping of chairs against tile floor signalled that the halls were about to be flooded with people.
"Time to go find the others."
Stiles and Lydia decided to split up, although they both were reluctant. They hoped that by hearing the alarm, they'd all get the hint and get the hell out of there. Especially since it could be a good hint that they were too late.
Lydia rushed to find Allison and Kira, who, according to Allison's text, were leaving from the library.
Lydia didn't actually know the layout of the school, so she headed towards the middle area as sneakily as she could. Teachers were ushering students outside, so she knew if she was spotted, she'd be grabbed among them.
Turning a corner, she heard her friends before she saw them, but quickly slowed her walk when she heard the conversation topic.
The fire alarm was still blaring loudly, obnoxious and almost near painful, but Lydia still picked up what they were saying.
"So what's going on with Lydia and Stiles?" Kira was asking eagerly, her feet quick beneath her but her eyes glued to Allison. "They've been inseparable. And when Lydia called the other night during the pack meeting, Stiles raced off so quickly. He looked so worried."
Lydia hid back behind the corner. She frowned. She hadn't realized she had interrupted him doing something the other night. She had assumed he was home. She felt guilty for bothering him, and then embarrassed that they all knew about her mental breakdown.
"He's very protective of her. They met at school early in the semester and got really close, especially after he brought her home for Thanksgiving." Allison explained, her eyes still scanning around corners. It seemed like she felt like there was something to find, that she was experiencing a sense of being watched. "After she was attacked, he wouldn't leave the hospital. No matter how hard we tried to get him to. His clothes were full of her blood, he was exhausted, but he wouldn't budge. We eventually convinced him to at least shower, after she woke up. And then she went missing, and I thought he was going to turn himself inside out."
She remembered her mother mentioning how dedicated Stiles was to staying at the hospital when she was recovering. She had been surprised, touched, but she knew she'd be foolish for expecting anything less. And based on his reaction when he found her outside his house, she knew he had been worried sick.
"He's so sweet with her. Just seems to know what she needs. And I've never seen him look so happy, not even when he was with Malia. And when they were discussing the plan to find this guy earlier, they just keep pace with each other so well. I think they'd be adorable together."
Allison chuckled. "Yeah. I think they're good for each other."
Lydia held her head high and turned the corner, pretending to be startled at the sight of them.
"There you guys are. Me and Stiles separated, and then I realized I didn't know my way around at all. We've got to get out of here before we get caught."
They rushed down the hall, keeping eyes peeled for any teachers.
"Did they find anything?" Allison asked.
Lydia shook her head. "No, I don't think so."
"So is he gone? Was he ever here?"
Before Lydia could answer, desperate to shout that yes he was definitely there, that she knew but she didn't know how, they spotted the others going through the back doors.
Following, Lydia halted, feeling as though someone was watching her.
She turned, the dreadful feeling coating her skin like a sudden chill, and she began walking back towards one of the classrooms.
"Lydia, we have to go!"
She held up a hand, shooing them off, and walked calmly towards the classroom.
It was the music room, the lights off, and she managed to get the door open. Weren't they supposed to lock these during a drill?
Entering the room, she swept her eyes over the instruments.
The room was suddenly bathed in light and she turned to see Stiles in the doorway.
She breathed. Her instinct told her it might be someone ready to give her the third degree for ignoring the fire drill, or worse, Barrow.
"What are you doing?" Stiles asked, crossing the space between them.
"I… I just feel something. About this room." She didn't know how to explain it. It was in her veins, drawing her there, a gut instinct that she couldn't understand the source of.
Her fingers grazed over the piano keys, pressing a couple in a row, and she backed up instantly at the whispers that overshadowed the ringing notes.
"Lydia…?"
"Did you hear that?"
"I heard you play notes on a piano. And I can hear the fire drill still screeching through the building."
"You didn't hear whispering?"
"I most definitely did not hear whispering."
Lydia shook her head, pressing notes on the piano again, one at a time so they could ring.
"There's this…" She listened harder, at the aggressive sound far into the brushing of sounds. "Almost like a chant?"
Stiles didn't know what to say, but then it dawned on him. "Jennifer… The Darach… she stole one of the 'philosopher' sacrifices from here… We think he was sitting here recording because there was a big bang halfway through the unfinished song and then there was blood on the piano cover…"
Lydia nodded, letting out a sigh. "I'm sorry. I thought it might relate to Barrow. Let's get out of here."
Before they could join the others outside, Stiles heard a familiar bark of irritation.
"STILINSKI!"
Stiles swallowed and turned to see Coach Finstock glaring at him.
"Lydia, go find the others." he said quietly, pushing her in direction to the other exit, as he stood patiently to await the earful that was definitely coming his way.
"I'm not letting you take the blame for this alone." she said stubbornly.
Before he could argue, Coach had crossed the room and gestured exasperatedly at him.
"What the hell are you doing in here? You-you don't even go here anymore! Wait, you graduated, right?"
"Uh, yeah, I did."
"Great! You graduated high school, yet you still seem inept in knowing when the hell to leave. Do you have some sort of hearing impairment that explains why the hell you've been, I don't know, IGNORING the obvious FIRE ALARM?"
"Um…"
"You know why there is such thing as a fire alarm? Just take a guess."
"I don't need to guess—"
"Of course not! Because you KNOW! A fire alarm lets you know when there is a FIRE. So do you want to tell me why you two are blatantly ignoring this completely obvious sign—"
"It was my fault." Lydia piped up suddenly, causing both men to look at her. She swallowed, pushing her hair off her face and giving a bashful smile. "We were meeting my mom here after school was done, but we ended up getting here a lot earlier than planned and she was still teaching. Stiles offered to show me around, since I'm new to town and haven't seen where my mom works at all, but I thought we should… take advantage of the time alone."
She let her arm wrap around his waist, leaning her body weight into him, her hand resting on his chest, and the suggested intimacy wasn't lost on either of them.
"You two… you went off to… what do you think this is, a motel?" he spluttered, not really sure what to make of the new information.
Lydia pretended to be embarrassed, ducking her head. "We were just kissing. Nothing… inappropriate."
Stiles was frozen next to her, silent and very confused.
"And what about the fire alarm?"
"We were a little too caught up in each other for it to register. And when it did, we were on our way out. But then you came in."
Coach sighed, long and hard. "Unbelievable."
Lydia bit her lip. Damn. She was hoping that would work.
But then he continued. "All right, well, carry on then. I mean leave. Go… go outside or something. Just… get out of here." Coach said, with considerable less malice than before, the fight seeming to seep out of his pores.
They didn't bother verbally replying, just sped out of there.
Stiles didn't know what to say, so he just followed where Lydia pulled him by the hand. Before they could disappear, Coach flashed him a thumbs-up, nodding in approval towards Lydia.
Stiles grinned, holding back a laugh, before he and Lydia poured out of the back doors.
"Okay, that was seriously amazing." Stiles said, finally releasing his laughter.
She smiled broadly, giving a fake bow. "He didn't seem like he was the brightest bulb on the tree."
The others rushed over.
"What the hell happened?" Allison asked immediately.
"Nothing. I just… thought I sensed something."
"Nothing on Barrow, huh?" Stiles asked the group, and everyone shook their heads disappointedly.
"I guess we'll have to leave it up the police for now. No scent to pick up on, so nothing to follow until we get a new lead. It's the end of the day now. School is out. If Barrow was going to set off a bomb, wouldn't he have done so by now?" Kira asked.
Stiles nodded. "We should all head home. Maybe try to research into what happened. Think you can check the bestiary, see if there's anything about flies in there?"
Allison shrugged. "I can try. It's about a thousand pages and half of it is in archaic Latin."
"If it helps, the word in archaic Latin for fly is musca." Lydia added.
The others looked at her.
Allison smirked. "You know archaic Latin?"
She shrugged. "I got bored with classical Latin."
The whole group looked a mix of impressed and amused, and Scott clapped Stiles on the shoulder, leaning close to his ear.
"Mind running Allison home? I'm going to take Kira on my bike so we can go talk to her mom about this Bardo thing, in case she knows anything more now that it looks like its resolving for us, and Derek and Isaac are going in Derek's car."
Stiles nodded. "No problem. Good luck." He jerked his head in direction of his jeep to indicate that Allison and Lydia should follow him.
He settled in step beside Lydia. "Do you still hear the buzzing?"
She sighed. "A little bit. But it's more than that. Do you remember that dreadful feeling I've been feeling lately? I feel it now. I don't think this is over."
"Do you want to go back?" Stiles asked, fully prepared to stop.
She shook her head, looking down. "No. Let's just go."
Stiles caught Allison's eyes as Lydia climbed in the jeep, and she shrugged with a sad smile. All he could do was get in too and drive.
Stiles lay face down on the floor, dragging the board out from under his bed.
Lydia was lying on her stomach on his bed, playing with the different strings he had laid out.
"I can't believe you kept that board hidden."
He grimaced. "Well, I figured it would raise some questions. I put it away once I went away to college, so it's not as though it was to purposely hide it from you. Now that this stuff is going on, it looks like I'm going to need it."
Stiles had convinced Lydia to come back to his place and help him set up his research board, since Allison had found Isaac sitting outside her house waiting for her, planning to help her look through the bestiary. She looked as though she could use the distraction, and they really were trying to avoid anyone being by themselves. Derek was going to see if Peter had any ideas.
Stiles started pinning things in place, printing off the few things he had looked up for samples.
As he strung a red piece of yarn between Barrow and the mental institution he once attended, Lydia picked up one of the balls of yarn.
"What do the different coloured strings mean?"
He turned to look back at her, twiddling the marker in his fingers. "Oh you know, just different stages in the investigation. Green is solved, yellow is to be determined, blue is just pretty.
"What does red mean?"
"Unsolved."
She squinted as she observed the board in full. "You only have red on the board."
"Yes, I'm aware, thank you." he said with an air of sarcasm, scrunching his nose at her before turning back around.
"We're lucky Barrow didn't go to our college instead of the high school. I don't fancy knowing what would've happened if someone discovered it was you that pulled the fire alarm, or found us still inside long after it went off."
He shrugged, unconcerned. "It wouldn't have mattered. We were on to something. That's worth the risk."
"Even though we couldn't find any proof of Barrow being there?"
The desolate way she said it wasn't lost on Stiles. He turned around in surprise, but she wouldn't meet his eyes, eyes focused on twirling some of the red string around her index finger.
He came over, marker still in hand, and crouched in front of her.
"Hey. Lydia. You're new at this, whatever this ability of yours is, and you've been right any time anything like this has happened. Even if it's been stuff that's happened in the past. So don't start doubting yourself now."
She looked up, mouth drawn down in a frown. "No scent. No bomb. And I could've gotten you hurt. What would've happened if I went back in that school and it did blow up? You would've been killed."
"Okay, okay, look." He reached out for the string around her fingers, beginning to unwind it. "Barrow was there, okay? You knew it, you felt it. And look, if you wanted to? I'd go back to that school right now and search all night just to prove it."
She smiled softly at him, Stiles returning the gesture with an adoring smile.
"We're going to figure out your abilities, Lydia, I promise. For now, all we can do is go by your instincts. The others have the power of smell…"
He halted, leaning forward slightly when he caught the strong scent of the marker in his hand.
Realization hit and he got to his feet.
"Get up. Get up now. We're going to the school."
The sun was setting now, the school empty.
Stiles lead them to the chemical storage closet, and Lydia caught on. He hadn't spoken the entire drive, mostly just muttered to himself, and she figured it was best to just wait. Now she understood. The chemicals would've masked Barrow's scent.
"This was supposed to be locked."
He looked at the desks, the different chemicals laid out, hoping for some semblance of a clue that Barrow had been there or what he had been planning.
A crunching beneath his shoes made him step back, shining the light from his phone over the floor.
They both peered at the scattered staples, globs of blood amongst the mess.
"He was here. Performing very minor surgery on himself, but he was here. You were right."
Lydia grimaced, averting her gaze. "So why don't I feel good about this?"
"Well, because he was here to kill somebody."
"But who?"
"That's what we have to figure out. Start looking around for… anything."
Stiles went back to sorting through the shelves. Lydia caught sight of the chalkboard, handwritten numbers on display, and tilted her head in contemplation. Approaching the front of the room slowly, she deciphered the different possibilities in her mind.
Stiles caught on to her distraction and followed. "Lydia, what are those?"
"Atomic numbers." They were listed numerically, vertically, so she wasn't sure what they meant. 19, 53, 88.
"Is it a formula?"
"Not really. Nineteen is potassium, fifty-three is iodine, and eighty-eight is radium. The first two make potassium iodide?" Biting her lip, she picked up a piece of chalk and began writing the element symbols next to their associated atomic numbers.
"I never understood why potassium was K." Stiles said, thinking back to his last semester and all the lab work he did.
"It comes from Kalium, the scientific Neo-Latin name." she explained as she wrote out iodine's elemental letter I.
"What's radium?"
"R-a." she said as she wrote it out, stepping back to see them all better.
Her breath stopped, but Stiles spoke it out loud before she could.
"Kira."
