⧗ CHAPTER THIRTEEN ⧗

Lunch was a normal affair.

In most cases, it was the highlight of Dmitri's day. Most meals were. Between strange nights filled with awakening memories, and days filled with increasing challenges, Dmitri needed all the sustenance he could get.

"Are you excited?" Sabina asked, nudging him in the side with a mischievous grin. "You're finally taking chemistry with us. Only took you a few months."

"Way too long," Oksana said around a mouthful of sandwich, earning a kick from Liza for her manners. "What? I'm not being gross!"

"Don't talk with a full mouth, it's disgusting," Liza complained.

"Is that new for Oksana?" Ksenia sighed from the other side of the table. Aside from a few glares, no one was brave enough to retort. They'd just feel it later on the sparring floor.

Dmitri had to bite his tongue, fixing a smile on his face as he turned his attention back to Oksana, who was red-faced with dejection. He couldn't start something with Ksenia today, but he could at least try to make his sister feel better. "I'm sure you guys will still kick my ass with Bunsen burners."

Sabina laughed and Oksana cracked a smile, hiding her mouth behind her hand this time. "Probably. But it's not too hard once you get the hang of it. It's less about learning complex sequences and more about learning different reactions, functional uses we can get out of every day resources — it's very practical. Kind of like home ec."

"What, like not mixing bleach and ammonia?" Dmitri asked, half-joking. He thought his mother might have made that mistake one time, or perhaps Father was just overexaggerating some past event.

"Yeah!" Oksana nodded enthusiastically, then grinned. "Or if you meant to do it intentionally, of course."

"We're also taught general safety procedures," Sabina added, with a shake of her head at Oksana for her mischievous suggestion. "Like what to do if we encounter anything dangerous or toxic in the wild. You'd be surprised how many people don't know not to touch dry ice with their bare hands until too late."

"Or gasoline," Rada added, making a face. "We had an exercise where we had to figure out how to fill an empty car with gas. It was my job to siphon it out of another car with a tube. Disgusting."

Dmitri, baffled, was about to ask how one even did that, before Annika jumped in. "We also use acids to burn away our fingerprints. You can do the same thing with a pumice stone, but this is faster. Hurts more, but this way they don't come back."

"Just have to be careful about not ruining your cuticles," Liza sighed, holding out her hands in front of her with an air of dissatisfaction. "My left pinky is still fucked up."

Dmitri checked his own hands, suddenly wondering if he had no fingerprints this entire time. It was never something he had to think about before, or noticed. But no, they're still there, the loops and whirls shadowed on his finger tips. Sabina showed hers for comparison. All smooth and shiny, slightly warped and discolored in places. He'd seen fingertips like that.

Mia had them.

He'd remembered holding her hand. How calloused it was. How strangely smooth the tips of her fingers had been. Her skin had always been so cold. The kind of cold that made you worry about poor circulation, but Mia had never suffered from any odd symptoms. Of course, that was before he understood what she really was.

A super soldier. And not so much like Captain America as he had initially believed. Hoped.

"You'll get yours done soon," Sabina reassured him. "Maybe even today, if you're lucky. I heard Comrade Zaitseva has a special lesson for us today. You got moved up just in time!"

It was certainly a relief to have all his classes in his own grade now. It wasn't that Dmitri didn't like the younger girls, but it was a constant reminder of how behind he was, how stupid he felt to be outwitted by a five-year-old in Mandarin. So yes, Dmitri was quite looking forward to this next class.

At least until Ksenia said, "Try not to get any acid on your face, Dmitri. It's the only asset you have."

Without thinking and without looking up, Dmitri replied, "Speak for yourself."

Several girls drew in a breath. Ksenia's head snapped around, like a tiger about to lunge.

"Alright, let's go!" Oksana said too cheerfully, too quickly, jumping out of her seat just as Ksenia's eyes started to burn holes through his head. "Doesn't hurt to be early!"

Sabina was right behind her, grabbing Dmitri's arm and hauling him up with them as they made a quick getaway. Had they not, it might have been World War III at lunch that day.

"You can't just say things like that, Dmitri," Sabina hissed as they hustled down the corridors, as if Ksenia was honing in on them with a ballistic missile. "You know how Ksenia is. You just have to let it roll off you, water off a duck's back."

"Easier said than done," Dmitri grumbled. "I'm sick of her just… getting away with that stuff."

"She does because she can back it up," Oksana reminded him. "Better watch what you eat, she might slip a laxative in your food now that you've opened your mouth."

"What?" Dmitri laughed despite himself, but he quickly came to understand that Oksana wasn't joking. And he didn't doubt for a second that Ksenia was completely capable of doing something like that. "And you guys never retaliate?"

"How can we?" Oksana shrugged. "She'll only get back at us twice as bad. It's no good starting a war like that. The Madame forbids that kind of sabotage, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. So long as we don't kill each other, or rat each other out —"

"— Which is worse, —" Sabina interjected.

"— Which is way worse," Oksana agreed. "Then as far as the Madame is concerned, it's not really happening. Get it?"

"Yes," Dmitri grumbled, finally shaking off Sabina's iron grip around his arm as they entered the chemistry classroom. It's set up was familiar to the civilian classrooms he's seen outside the Red Room — black lab tables, blackboards filled with chemical compositions, cabinets filled with dark containers and lab equipment, a fume hood that appeared to be still made of asbestos. Yep, standard chemistry classroom. Nothing unusual to see here.

They took a table for themselves, waiting for the rest of the class to show up. The whole experience left Dmitri with a bit of a headache and a dry mouth; Ksenia had gotten him all worked up again, it seemed. Having her reappear a few minutes later certainly did not alleviate the symptoms.

For now, at least, Ksenia relegated herself to shooting daggers at him from across the room as she sat at a separate table. As long as Dmitri didn't have to work with her on any group project, that suited him just fine.

Comrade Zaitseva was the last to enter the room, closing the door behind her and walking down the center aisle between tables. A stout woman in a white lab coat, rubber gloves to her elbows, and gray hair shorn short in a man's cut, she carried an air of academic sophistication. Slow measured steps, the sound echoing in the room. She came to a stop in front of the blackboard, performed a heel turn, and faced the class. And in one breath announced. "Today, your lesson will be to save yourselves."

A few giggles flitted about the room, but Comrade Zaitseva's expression remained stern and unyielding as she continued. "Earlier today, your lunch was dosed with a deadly poison that you have all consumed. You may have already begun feeling its effects. Dry throat, nausea, headaches, cold sweats, blurriness of vision. These symptoms will intensify in the next hour. The final stage will be difficulty breathing, paralysis, and then, inevitably, death."

The longer she spoke, the more the entire class realized that their professor was not joking. At her final words, the girls unleashed a unanimous cry of alarm, sharing looks of pale-faced terror. Already Rada was shaking, Liza's brow shiny with sweat, Ksenia going tense with measured breaths. Annika had Liza's hand in a vice grip and next to him, Sabina almost fell out of her chair.

"She's joking, right?" Dmitri asked, on some last-ditch hope that this was just a hypothetical situation, and not a real one. Even as he felt his headache pound, the blood rushing past his ears in an increasing panic. But his sisters' matching expressions of horror told him enough.

"This is a fast-acting poison," Comrade Zaitseva continued, disregarding the interruption. "But not so fast that you cannot diagnose and find a cure. All of its ingredients can be found in this room. By the end of the hour, you will have cured yourself. Or you'll be dead. To help your fellow sisters is up to you. You may begin."

The classroom exploded with pandemonium, everyone talking, crying at once, moving up and scrambling for the cabinets, searching for whatever they may need.

"What the hell did we take?" Dmitri asked; he couldn't remember any strange taste in his food, and he didn't know enough about different poisons to guess whatever it was they may have consumed.

"Well, it's not cyanide, too fast —" Oksana began, trembling in her seat.

"Arsenic, too slow," Sabina nodded, "We would've smelled or tasted it, too. It had to be a liquid or powder form."

"Can't be anthrax," Oksana continued, grabbing for a piece of paper and hurriedly writing down symptoms. "She didn't mention any bleeding. Maybe some kind of animal venom?"

"I heard some snakes venom can paralyze you," Dmitri offered, trying to search his own limited knowledge. Paralyzation would be death, freezing your lungs and your heart. But it wasn't impossible to survive — CPR, or medical intervention to keep the heart and air flowing until the poison passed through. But Dmitri doubts they'd ever get that far.

"A neurotoxin!" Sabina gasped, her hands hitting the table. "God, you might be right! But if we ingested it, then it might be different compared to being bitten. And there wouldn't be just a regular anti venom here we can use."

"We'd have to make it," Oksana agreed, her writing absolutely terrible as her hand shook across the page. "Every venom is different. And that's if they haven't added anything to it. It might've been enhanced to fit this timeframe. Cobras, coral snakes, death adders —"

Behind them, glass broke as Annika knocked over a vial in retrieving something from a cabinet. It looked like a lump of rock in her hand. Ksenia was already putting something together with a mixture of chemicals, but had turned the labels away from sight. Bitch. Still, Dmitri felt as if they were falling behind. He looked up. Ten minutes had already passed since class had begun.

"I'll get the basic ingredients," Sabina volunteered, launching out of her seat.

But Dmitri was already doubting his own guesswork. "Antivenom usually requires the snake venom it came from, doesn't it? Do we have that here?"

Oksana looked around nervously. "No. And we don't exactly have the tools to make one. It involves using other animals, and it's a long process. They wouldn't set us up with something impossible — so it could be plant-based?"

"Like what? Poppies, belladonna —"

"Opium poisoning would feel different," Oksana shook her head, and there was now a cold sheen of sweat covering her face and hands. "We'd feel slower, sluggish. Maybe deadly nightshade? But then we'd be experiencing hallucinations. And I'm pretty sure everything I'm seeing is real."

Dmitri agreed, for the most part. This entire scenario felt like a hallucination. Was his shortness of breath part of the poison, or was it just his increased panic and the quickly evaporating time?

All the while, Comrade Zaitseva just stood there, silently observing the chaos that unfolded around her. She offered no remarks, no answers to anyone's questions, except where they might find tools or ingredients. She remained placid and unaffected by the potential death of the entire class.

"Curare!" Sabina returned with an armful of vials. "It has to be curare! The symptoms are similar but it can't be undone with just a bezoar. I don't think Liza's done enough for herself."

She nodded at Liza, who across the room had just consumed the strange rock thing that Annika had handed to her. "Though I don't know, it might be enough if we consumed it, and not injected straight into our bloodstream. Can't hurt, at least," Sabina said, shoving two gross-looking dark lumps towards Sabina and Dmitri.

Dmitri almost refused to, on appearance alone. Perhaps dying would be better than consuming whatever that is. Up close, the bezoar didn't look like a rock, but some organic thing all pressed together, solidified like a fossil.

"It comes from a goat," Oksana said, downing it without hesitation. "If the poison is still in our stomach, it might buy us some time."

Dmitri decided fuck it, and popped the thing in his mouth. It was large, almost too big to swallow, but he couldn't force himself to chew on it either. It burned, scraping his throat as he swallowed it whole. "That was disgusting."

"This is going to taste even worse," Sabina assured him, as she put on goggles and gloves, putting together three glass vials. "I need you guys to help. If its really curare, then I need to get the dosage of each part just right. Some pyridostigmine, neostigmine, physostigmine, and edrophonium… my fingers are starting to feel numb. Don't let me drop anything."

Dmitri did his best to help, keeping containers steady as Sabina poured, Oksana dropping her chin to the table to help keep her measurements exact in each glass. He had no idea if Sabina was right about curare; he didn't know enough about it himself, what the symptoms were, how they were different from anything else. He was putting trust in her. That this was real. That this was actually happening. He already knew what it felt like to die. He didn't want it to happen again.

He kept glancing at the clock. "Fifteen minutes."

Oksana cursed. "We have time. We totally have time. Right?"

"Just enough," Sabina said, though her voice sounded tight. Dmitri, too, was having difficulty breathing. He couldn't bear to look over to see how the others were doing — though, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ksenia leaning back in her chair, relaxed, an empty glass in front of her.

Dmitri had to ignore his rising envy and anger, focusing instead on his sisters in front of him. Ksenia wouldn't help them even if they all begged.

"There!" Oksana declared, and Sabina pulled back, stumbling slightly before falling weak-kneed in her chair. They were all panting despite their lack of physical movement, labored breathing as they each picked up a glass. Sabina needed help with hers; maybe the poison was further along after all her rushing around.

In a final moment of doubt, Sabina suddenly paused and said, "What if this doesn't work?"

"Then we're dead anyways," Dmitri said, and she stared at him for a long moment before nodding. There was no arguing with the fact. Their hour was almost up. The panic was dying as everyone cemented on whatever their final cure was. "On three?"

The other two nodded, and on the countdown, they all drank at the same time. The next table over, Annika and Rada had also consumed whatever mixture they put together.

Everyone sat there in silence, breathing hard, watching as those last minutes ticked down. Highly aware of their own bodies, every reaction, every symptom, every strange feeling in their gut.

In front of them, Comrade Zaitseva checked her watch. Dmitri couldn't stop shaking. He could barely hear anything with his heart pounding so fast. His chest hurt. His stomach churned. His fingers were completely cold and numb. Was that the poison or the cure?

As the minute hand ticked over the hour, the bell rang — everyone jumped in their seats. Comrade Zaitseva finally spoke, ending the silence. "Congratulations, everyone. It seems you have all correctly identified the curare poison and found the correct antidote. Consider yourselves the first class that succeeded with no deaths. You may leave for your next class."

Dmitri exchanged looks with Sabina and Oksana. No one died? They all made it? The class broke out in laughter and tears, exhaustion taking them as they slumped over their desks in relief. It didn't even feel real. Sabina patted his back, color having returned to her face. Sabina, too, looked better already, though still slightly nauseous as she wiped the sweat from her brow. "Too close, that was too close…"

As they stood, Dmitri still wasn't convinced that it had been real. Maybe Comrade Zaitseva had lied to them, put on a convincing act and relied on their own immature minds to do the work for her — that had to be it. No one would actually poison their students like that. Of course not. The symptoms Dmitri felt had been entire his own panic setting in.

Yet as they funneled out of the room, Dmitri heard a clatter behind them. Everyone turned when Liza had fallen out of her seat, the stool coming down with her. Rada rushed to help her up, but something was wrong — Liza's face was turning blue.

"Liza, no!" Rada cried, flipping Liza over onto her back. Her mouth open in a terrible wheezing breath, hands clawing at her throat, her movements becoming more frantic, yet slower at the same time. "Help! Someone help!"

Oksana rushed over, pressing her hands to Liza's chest and trying to perform chest compressions. Dmitri just stood there, watching in frozen horror as Liza went still, stiller, stopped moving entirely. Still Oksana kept trying to push her heart into action, Rada puffing air down her mouth.

But Liza didn't move again.

"Help her!" Annika shouted at Comrade Zaitseva, who looked on dispassionately as they desperately tried to save their sister. "Do something!"

"Do what?" The professor asked, raising her eyebrows. "The poison has already done its work. Sister Sharapova had the chance to save her own life. She was… insufficient."

"No!" Rada cried, but it was clear that Liza was dead. Her eyes wide and unblinking, unmoving. Oksana sobbing as she pumped uselessly at her chest. It was Sabina who came to rest her hands on her shoulders, pull her to stop. Annika, who wrapped her arms around Rada as she sobbed, and sobbed, trying to shake Liza back to life.

"Don't look so surprised," a voice murmured next to him. Dmitri jolted, his head whipping to Ksenia, who appeared next to his side. Her eyes were dark, casting up into his. "Did you think this was a game?"

"They…" Dmitri couldn't find the words. "They just killed her…"

"No one killed her," Ksenia sniffed, raising her nose in contempt. "Liza's own weakness killed her. She has no one to blame but herself."

"How can you even say that?" Dmitri was still trying to overcome the horrible realization he just watched someone die. Again. This time, his own sister. It was so much worse.

"How can you afford to be so stupid?" Ksenia shot back at him, eyes flashing. "What do you think the Red Room is? If Liza can't save herself here, then she'd never last in the real world. Only the strong survive."

And with a flick of her hair, she walked right out of the classroom, leaving the rest of the girls to sob over Liza's body.

Not everyone survives the Red Room. Those had been Father's words, hadn't they been? Dmitri had known that. He already knew that.

This time, Dmitri realized he'd been lucky. Without Sabina and Oksana, he would've joined Liza on that floor.

But no one survived on luck alone.

A/N: Pretend i know anything about chemistry or poisons lol.