Becca stood in line to take the PSATs at school on Saturday with Kira, Scott, Stiles, and Malia.
"Where's Lydia?" Becca asked.
"She's took it her freshman year." Stiles answered.
"Does that mean I could have taken it some other time?" Malia asked, clearly nervous.
"Malia, you studied harder for this than any of us." Scott stated.
"Doesn't mean I'm gonna do good." Malia answered.
"Well." Stiles corrected her.
"Well, what?" Malia asked, confused.
"It's do well, not good." he explained.
"Oh, God! Okay, okay." Malia freaked out.
"You'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." Scott said to calm her down.
"It's only three hours. We can survive three hours." Kira said with a smile.
…
They all took their seats in the classroom. Stiles held a pencil in his mouth and another behind his ear as he began to flip through the test booklet.
"Please do not open the test booklet until you are instructed to do so." Simon, one of the teachers administering the test said. Stiles quickly closed his booklet and looked up to listen to the instructions. Becca couldn't help but laugh at him. Stiles smiled when he heard her laugh.
"I can't find him, but Mr. Yukimura is upstairs grading papers. Do you want me to try him?" Ms. Martin, Lydia's mom asked Simon, referring to Coach who was supposed to be helping administer the test.
"We have to start. We can ask for his assistance during the first break. You may now open your test booklets and begin." Simon ordered the class and everyone got to work.
Becca's eyes wandered over to Stiles as he scribbled in boxes. He looked so cute when he was focusing. Becca turned to her own paper and started flying through questions. She was naturally smart and studied a lot, so it wasn't hard for her. A little while into the test a girl sitting behind Becca, Tracy, fell out of her chair.
"Sydney! Are you alright?" Ms Martin asked.
"I'm okay. I just got kind of dizzy," Sydney explained as Ms Martin helped her up. While doing so, Ms Martin saw a legion on Sydney's forearm. "Sydney, how long have you had this?" she asked.
"I don't know." Sydney said before taking her seat.
"Ms. Martin, do I need to stop the test?" Simon asked.
"No, um, it's fine. Everybody stay in your seats. I'll, um, be back in a minute. Nobody leaves the room." Ms Martin said before leaving the room and pulling out her phone. Before she could make a call a group of boys opened the doors to the school. "Get back! No! Do not come in here! Get back outside!" she yelled as she ran toward them, shooing them away. She turned around to see students stepping out into the hall.
"Back to your seats. Now. Please." she told them and everyone listened. She made a call on her phone and said "I need the number of the CDC. Yes, the Center for Disease Control."
About an hour later the CDC showed up and the test was stopped. Everyone was hanging around in classrooms and in the halls.
"Bet they're thinking smallpox," Stiles said to Becca, Malia, and Kira.
"Not likely. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1979. We've only managed to completely eradicate two viruses in history. The other was rinderpest. It killed cows." Simon told him.
"So we should be comforted by that, right?"
"Unless it's something worse."
Malia and Becca listened to what was happening outside. "Whatever it is, they're taking it pretty seriously. There are a lot of cars and trucks out there." Malia informed. "Your dad's with them."
"Hey, I should probably call him" Stiles reached for his phone next to Simon.
"Don't bother. They would have shut off any access to all outside communication by now. No cell service, no WiFi. No one starting a panic. Looks like we're all just going to have to wait here and see what happens."
After Scott began to feel weak and Kira electrocuted someone, the pack met in a small closet with Mr. Yukimura.
"It's still happening." he said, acknowledging Malia's wolf claws.
"I can't make them go back." she explained nervously.
"Obviously the virus is affecting the two of you {Scott and Malia} in a way it won't hit any human being."
"Why isn't anything happening to me?" Becca asked, and then, as if on cue, she felt a surge of pain rush to her head. She grunted in discomfort and clenched her muscles as she waited for it to pass. When it did, her eyes were purple and refused to turn back.
"Well what do you know? Something happened." Stiles said with a hint of worry, but mostly sarcasm. "You guys have to stay out of sight. We have to quarantine you from the quarantine." He began to move his bracelet around his wrist in circles.
"Yeah, but where? I mean, what if they get violent? Like on a full moon." Kira made a good point.
"We shouldn't stay in here. Not in the locker room." Scott said, trying to think of other places to hide.
"A classroom is not going to hold us." Malia added.
"What about the basement?" Becca asked.
"Too many ways out. We need something secure. Somewhere nobody can find us." Scott said.
"The vault." Stiles realized.
"The Hale vault. The Hales always have an escape route. Like their house. There has to be another way in." Scott said, continuing Stiles's thought.
"This is where the school sign is, so the vault's got to be right about here." Stiles pointed to the blueprints of the school rolled out in front of them.
"I suppose if there's a second entrance, it would probably be accessible from the basement." Mr. Yukimura said.
"It's probably somewhere in this hallway. West corridor." Stiles reached further to point, revealing a lesion on his arm. "Whoa."
"It's happening to you too. You're getting sick. You all are." Mr. Yukimura stated.
"I don't feel sick." Kira commented.
"I think it's affecting you differently, neurologically. I found your test answers here in a pile with the others." Mr. Yukimura showed her test to reveal Kira had made marks outside of the multiple choice bubbles. The teenagers left Mr. Yukimura and headed down to the basement to look for an entrance.
"Hey, guys... Over here. Look at the cracks in the wall." Stiles said, pointing to a part of the wall behind a metal cabinet. Scott helped him move it aside. "It's like the entrance outside, it only opens with claws. Anyone's claws, right?" Stiles said, him and Scott exchanged a look.
"Um... Malia, can you try?" Scott asked.
"Why me?"
"I don't have control" Scott said holding up his clawless hand. Seeing that Malia needed to open it because she was a Hale even though she didn't know, Becca held up her hands to show she didn't have control either.
"Okay. I'll do it. But first tell me what you've been hiding from me." Stiles only stammered in response. "I know you think you're trying to protect me, but I can handle it. I know I'm on the list.
"Yes…"
"So how much?"
"How much what?"
"How much am I worth?"
"Four million." Scott answered.
"Are you okay?" Becca asked.
"Yeah. Scott's worth 25, Kira, six. They'll take you guys out way before me. But, Becca, how much are you worth? Are you even on the list?"
"Yes, I don't know how much actually. Stiles?" Becca asked.
"Uh…"
"Stiles?"
"20 million."
"20 million!?" Becca almost yelled. "That's almost as much as Scott!"
"I know, but don't worry, okay? We'll stop it."
"We're not going to stop anything if we don't survive this." Malia said, sticking her claws into the lock and opening the door. When they stepped inside, Becca got another vision. She screamed out in pain as she saw images of Simon in a lab as the tape from the benefactor played in the background and a wolf died. Everyone waited for her to say something once it passed.
"It's Simon. He made this virus to kill us."
"Well how do we stop it?" Malia asked.
"I-I don't know I can't control these things." Becca sat down in defeat and so did Scott and Malia. Stiles took a seat next to Becca and grabbed her hand. Everyone sat in silence like that for a moment before Stiles spoke up.
"You know, this is where it all started. That's where the money was. 117 million in bearer bonds."
"How do you even change bearer bonds into cash?" Kira asked.
"Bank, I guess. They just let it sit here the whole time collecting dust. You know bearer bonds are basically extinct?"
"Why does it matter?"
"You know how many problems that money could solve?"
"For you?" Becca asked.
"Me. My dad... The Eichen House and MRI bills are crushing him." Becca squeezed his hand a little harder and leaned on his shoulder.
"Mom does this thing, she writes down all the items in our budget, and how much they cost, then she adds them all up and figures out how long we have until... We lose the house."
As the group waited in the vault, Scott, Malia, Kira, and Becca all got worse. Becca could hardly stand up and was lying down next to Stiles. He never stopped holding her hand. Scott was sitting, listening to what was happening upstairs.
"Anything?" Stiles asked.
"They're looking for us. Someone's going to have to go out there." Scott brought his voice down to a whisper. "We need to tell her the truth about Peter. She's going to see the rest of the dead pool eventually." Scott said, looking at Malia who was asleep next to Becca.
"Try to remember that Peter is the one name missing on that list. Which either makes him incredibly lucky or the benefactor. She finds out about him she's going to go to him, you know she is. And then he's going to twist his way into her head like he does with everyone. Including us. We let him walk around like nothing ever happened, like he's one of the good guys... Scott, he's not one of the good guys. If she finds out about him, she's gone. That's probably what he's waiting for and if he wins, we lose."
"We're already losing."
Stiles nudged Becca awake and she looked up at him with big hazel eyes and gave him a small smile.
"I gotta leave for a few, okay?"
"Where are you going?"
"Simon's up there and he's going to be looking for you guys for proof to send to the benefactor and teachers are probably looking for us too."
"You're coming back, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, of course." He said as he released her hand and walked to the door. He stared back at Becca as the door slid shut. There was no way he was letting this kill her.
Meanwhile, Satomi was at Deaton's with a wolf from her pack who just died from the virus. Derek was also there and they figured out the tea that Satomi used to have with his mom is the antidote for the virus which is why Satomi wasn't infected. The mushrooms for the tea are in the vault, but they have no way of communicating that to Scott.
"Stiles, you're not looking so good, maybe you ought to lie down." Ms. Martin said to Stiles.
"It's okay, have you seen Mr. Yukimura?"
"Yeah, he's fine, he's helping the other students."
"Okay. Is Coach the only adult who got sick today?"
"As far as I know."
"Why is he…" Stiles began, but then the room started to spin.
"Stiles?" Ms. Martin's voice sounded distorted in his head. "I think you should lie down."
"Yeah, no, it's okay. I'll be back, I'll be right back." He ran off again out of the room looking for Mr. Yukimura.
Back in the vault, Malia spotted a folded up piece of paper that must've fallen out of Stiles's pocket when he stood up. She picked it up and slowly unfolded it.
"Malia…" Scott prepared to explain everything to her, but she didn't say anything. "Malia?"
"I can't see. I can't see anything."
###
Stiles ran into Simon in an empty classroom. He held a gun in his hand and was loading it as he spoke. "I was wondering how that idiot got sick. I'm also wondering where your friends are. Since in order to get paid by the benefactor, I need to have proof they're dead."
"Visual confirmation."
"Exactly." Simon said, raising the gun so it touched Stiles's forehead.
###
"What's happening to us?" Becca asked as she too began to lose her eyesight.
"Scott? I can't... I can't see…" Kira called to her boyfriend. Scott looked down at his own hand and saw it was blurry.
###
"Still a bit feverish, Mr. Stilinski. But you should know something, the virus doesn't kill humans, you'll get better. So don't you think you should tell me where they are? Shouldn't one of you get to live?" Simon told Stiles.
"I think I saw them in the library. Or it might've been the cafeteria. It was definitely one of those two."
"I'm going to count to three, and then I'm going to kill you."
"Think you can scare me?"
"No, I think I can kill you. I just thought the countdown would make it more exciting. So... One... Two…" A gunshot rang out in the room and blood splattered across Stiles's face. Simon fell over with a bullet in his head to reveal Mr. McCall in a hazmat suit.
"Where the hell did you come from?
"Stiles, listen. I got a call from Melissa. I don't know what it means. She said there's an antidote. It's in a vault, reishi mushrooms."
"Wait, what's in the vault?"
"It's in a jar on one of the shelves. She said to tell Scott, it's in the vault." With that, Stiles sprinted back down to the basement and banged on the entrance of the vault. "Hey, Scott? Scotty? In the vault, in there with you. It's called reishi mushrooms. Scott? Scott, open the door! It's in there with you. It's in a jar, it's on one of the shelves. Scott! Scott, can you hear me?" Stiles continued to bang on the door.
Just then, Becca got another vision. She no longer had the energy to scream in pain, so she clenched her jaw tightly and shut her eyes. "Scott, I got a vision of it. It's on the top shelf, by the safe."
Scott struggled to stand on his feet and he activated his wolf vision. He looked around and saw Becca, Malia, and Kira laying on the floor. He leaned against the shelves as he made his way to the safe. On the last shelf of the row was the jar of reishi mushrooms. He was unable to grab it and open it, so he just knocked it off the shelf. When the glass broke, an orange smoke arose and they all took deep breaths as it healed them. Becca crawled to the door and opened it for Stiles. He smiled through his tears and knelt down to pull her into a hug. Over his shoulder he saw Malia looking at the paper.
"Hey, Malia." he said, but Malia just got up and walked past him.
Let me know what you think of the story so far, especially how Becca is fitting into it. I'm trying to create stronger friendships between her and the pack so please give me any constructive criticism you have!