Vivian took a step up the staircase to her first class of the day at the University of Pendragon with her bestie Nina.
"I can't believe you're walking so slow," Nina said. "We're going to be late!"
"No, I got out of bed 20 minutes early today. I haven't missed a damn thing."
"That's just an adjustment you made in response to the negative reinforcement from the quiz you missed last week. The traffic wasn't clear enough for your alarm to get us there on time today! I can't believe you make me drive you here!"
They got to the door and passed her brother Lucas by.
"Are we late?" Vivian whispered as she got a row ahead of him.
"You're right on time," he replied. "And you know what my coach used to say: to be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late... And to be late is to be fired or dead."
"Shit," Vivian responded, looking at the quiz questions marked A to D without knowing the context of what the question to the answers was.
"If you were here early we wouldn't have to guess..." urged Nina.
Quite fortuitously, their answer of B was correct, and they proceeded to score 100 on the quiz.
"This week's lab, you'll be creating the product of imidazole-4-acetaldehyde from diamine oxidase."
Vivian's stress levels went through the roof. She was never able to create enough product for the mass spectrometer to identify the chemical she was assigned to make without copying literally everything Nina did.
"This is gonna suck," she said.
"Listen, I'll get you through it," Nina replied. "Have I ever let you down-"
At that moment everyone's cell phones went off with an alarm:
"DEFCON-4: PENDRAGON TARGETED BY CRITICAL MASS SAKURADITE WEAPON. UFN TREATY COMPROMISED. EVACUATE IF POSSIBLE."
People began screaming their heads off, including Nina.
"I don't wanna go-" Nina yelled.
"So... unfair..." Lucas muttered.
Vivian strangely kept her peace as stress and then resignèd acceptance that she was going to die flushed over her body.
...Why did it have to be this way? she asked herself.
Everything faded to black in a fulgurous heat.