Stiles swallowed down the rising fear in his throat. "Well fuck."

"Yeah." Derek slumped against the porch.

"What do we do?"

He shrugged.

Stiles chewed his lip. "Are you giving up?"

Derek frowned at the grey wooden planks below his feet. "I just don't know how to stop this."

"Okay well you can't just stand around here, Derek."

He glanced up, fixing Stiles with a pitiful look. "I thought you didn't expect me to have all the answers."

Stiles' jaw twitched. "I don't. But that doesn't mean you should just quit."

"Yeah? And what about you?" Derek pushed off from the porch and stalked close. "You were part of Scott's pack. That means you have a responsibility to him. And you just threw it away."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"I've been a wolf my whole life. I know what it means to be pack more than you ever will. So you're having some silent pissing contest with Isaac—grow up. Isaac didn't steal your best friend. Scott didn't prefer him over you. You let your own goddamn insecurities get in the way. Isaac was just the excuse you needed."

Derek stood only inches away, glaring under his eyebrows with deep-set frown on his lips. Stiles didn't dare take his eyes off his. It was too damn on point for him to reveal anything to Derek or the dude would think he was weak.

"Scott said himself that it was better this way."

Derek inched forward—his breath was visible right between them. "That's because he's trying to fucking protect you. You're just being selfish."

Stiles pulled away just a fraction. "It doesn't mean I'm wrong." But everything he said was true. And yeah he might be able to admit it to himself, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt to have it shoved in his face.

Derek stepped back. "I'm not an idiot, Stiles. Obviously no one is asking for you to go out and get yourself killed. I'm saying you need to man-up, take responsibility, and be a pack to Scott. And that means being brothers and protecting each other."

Stiles waved his arms. "I would love to help out, Derek, it's too bad we haven't got a fucking clue what we're up against."

Derek heaved, lips tightening into an angry frown. But his phone buzzed in his pocket before he could make a response. "What?" he answered. Rude. Derek's eyes widened. "What—no I'm coming over there." He hung up. "It's Erica and Boyd." Derek was frightened. "They're shifting."

Stiles immediately glanced at the sky. It was still at least three days till the full moon. This couldn't be good. "I'm going with you." Derek shook his head but Stiles grabbed his leather jacket by the shoulder. "I'm going with you."

Derek searched Stiles' eyes for a few seconds before nodding. "Fine. But stay back."

They jumped in his Camaro and raced towards the vet's. When they got there, Stiles realized Derek or someone was sugar coating the situation because Erica and Boyd weren't just shifting—they were howling, rabid, and ready to claw the nearest person's face off. Deaton had subdued them into heavy duty silver cages with mountain ash around the perimeter, but it didn't look like it was going to hold with their violent thrashing. Eyes still glazed white, Erica and Boyd were stationed on opposite sides of the room, snarling and scratching blindly at the cages, hissing as it burned their skin.

"They don't seem to have any sense of their surroundings," Deaton informed as soon as Derek burst through the door, eyes flashing red with intent as he spotted his betas. "And they go in and out of this state every few minutes. I think they're undergoing periods of hallucination intertwined with catatonia. It's not like anything I've ever seen." Deaton watched as Erica and Boyd crashed in the cages. "I don't know if those will hold. Or what they'll do if they get out."

Derek glanced between the two cages. He went to Erica first, squatting down in front of her cage just beyond the mountain ash line. Erica howled in his face, fingers scratching against the metal.

"Erica," he said.

She hissed, waving her hair around and turning in the cage. She had no idea where he was—or maybe even where she was.

"Erica," he repeated this time lower and more demanding. A low growl began in his throat, his eyes shone crimson, and he let his fangs extend just enough to show sharp and menacing, but he kept back most of the transformation.

Erica stiffened, fingers almost touching the grating. Her breaths came heavy and filled with untapped rage. The room grew quiet and Derek glanced behind him. Boyd had gone similarly still with breaths just as heavy. Stiles and Derek glanced between the two wolves. Their heavy breaths were perfectly in sync.

"That is the creepiest thing I've ever seen," Stiles half-whispered. "They're like those vampires from that Will Smith movie. At least I think it was that movie. That's the one where he's like the last person on earth because some cure for cancer turned everyone into vampires, right? And like the dog dies and it's super sad and—"

"Stiles," Derek snapped. He was already back to normal, sharp teeth gone, red eyes vanished. He was just giving his usual shut up look.

Deaton sighed behind Stiles. "I'm sorry, Derek, but you didn't fix anything. In about ten minutes they'll be doing that all over again."

"How did you even trap them in there?" Stiles asked.

Deaton just gave him a look and then turned back to Derek. "I think your best bet would be to find the cause of this phenomenon and destroy it."

"How do we even know 'it' is and 'it'?" Stiles asked.

"Something killed those two who floated down the river," Derek replied.

"Right." Stiles bit his lip. His eyes lit up a second later and he nearly crashed into the wall turning around. "Where's Scott?!"

Dr. Deaton took a breath and glanced at the silver door that led to the back room with the rest of the animal cages. "He's not well."

"Oh well then that makes everything better. Come on Derek, let's go back to my place and watch Iron Man 2, because gosh Scott is just having a bad case of the flu. Where's Scott—no, never mind. He's back here, isn't he?" Stiles walked over palmed the handle to the back room.

Derek was there in a second, hand on his shoulder, eyes hesitant. "Stiles."

"Stiles," he mimicked. "It's not working, buddy. It doesn't matter how bad you think it is, I'm going to see Scott."

"I was just going to ask if you were sure." There was a mixture of worry and pity in his eyes. And God Stiles would have resented it if it didn't make his stomach do a little flip-flop.

"Yeah I'm sure."

Derek opened the door for him. Stiles under his arm, scrambled along the wall for a second for the light switch, and blinked as the beams of light flickered into life.

The walls of the room were lined with metal cages—all empty. A door was half hidden on the far end of the right wall that presumably led to some storage room or a bathroom, Stiles wasn't sure. In the center of this room was a long metal table, shiny and sterile like everything else. Scott was slumped from the wooden stool over a good portion of this table. His brown eyes blinked at the flickering light.

"Scott." Stiles rushed over and put a hand on his shoulder, shaking him slightly.

Scott mumbled something unintelligible into the arm of his grey sweater.

"Hey, dude, no, you gotta get up. C'mon."

Scott slowly tried to sit up, a little dribble of drool on his chin and a sloppy expression on his face. If Stiles didn't know better he's say Scott was drunk off his ass. "Stiles?" he bubbled—bubbled.

"Shit, man." Stiles grabbed Scott's face and tried to shake him into something resembling cognitive. He put a thumb over his left eyebrow. Scott's eyes were filming over. "Is this like what happened with Erica and Boyd?" he asked Derek who was standing in the doorway.

"No. They weren't like this."

"Stiles you have nice skin," Scott said with a dopey smile and an unsteady finger poking his arm.

"Jesus it's like he's wasted or half-asleep or, well, mostly asleep. I don't even know."

Suddenly, Scott's nails started to grow, his fangs popped from under his lip, and his ears elongated. Stiles jumped back.

"Is he shifting?"

Derek pulled Stiles back. "He's been doing that on-and-off. Come on, you've seen enough."

Scott growled low in his throat, yellow eyes glinting under his hooded gaze. He raked his claws against the metal as he unsteadily pulled away from the table. Derek half-dragged Stiles out and slammed the door shut behind him. A howl came after, and Stiles realized he was shaking. He made a fist and ground his teeth. He wasn't going to freak out—he was not going to freak out. His best friend was losing it.

"Shit," Stiles mumbled, leaning against the cold wall. "How did this even happen?"

"That's what we have to figure out," Deaton said. "I don't know how far Erica or Boyd's condition will progress. And I can't tell you if or when Jackson will start to exhibit the same symptoms as those two. But it think it's obvious to say that if we don't figure this out sooner than later, we're going to have four very unmanageable problems on our hands. Derek, do you still have the bestiary?"

Derek shook his head. "Yes and no. I'd have to talk to my uncle—who likes to play games."

"Well do what you have to," Deaton instructed. "I think you should also consider speaking with the Argents. We may need their help to defeat this thing."

"Allison and her father are out of the hunting business," Stiles said. "They're not going to want to help."

Dr. Deaton eyed Stiles. "Still, you may be surprised." He glanced back at Derek. "And you need to continue your search for Isaac. I would also advise you not to go alone." There may or may not have been a pointed nod in Stiles' direction. A pair of low growls began behind them. Derek half-turned but Deaton stopped him. "Don't worry about them. I'll make sure they don't get out. Just go."

Still, Stiles had to pull Derek out of there. "Since you already searched the woods today," Stiles said as he tugged Derek back to his car, "I'm thinking we're going to have to take a different approach to this."

"And what's that?" he asked quietly. He face was concentrated in a pitiful frown aimed at the ground.

Stiles poked Derek's shoulder. "Dude, seriously. Quit with the frowny-face. We're gonna figure this out and we're kill whatever we have kill to get Scott and the others back to normal-ish." Stiles nodded, tongue between his lips. Derek just rolled his eyes. "Now, I've been thinking… Plenty of people in this town take walks in the forest—hell, there's an entire neighborhood along the main road with large foresty estates all gated and shit. I mean, we were in the forest—you were there this morning. So what's so special about those guys that were killed?"

Derek's brows constricted. "What if it's not random?"

Stiles grinned. "Exactly."

"You want to break in to the police station and get those files, don't you?"

"Now you're getting it."

"And that is what scares me."