JENNIE

It took a damn week to get a meeting with Dr. Manoban. The woman never answered her email, nor the phone number she'd listed on the syllabus. In lamenting to Jihyo, she told me to be audacious in my dealings with someone in power positions. So, five minutes into her lecture, I'd boldly asked her if I could make an appointment, and in return, she'd pinned me with a dagger-hurling glare.

Then agreed to meet with me after class.

Palms sweating, I trailed after her from the lecture auditorium, all the way to her office. Knots wound impossibly tight in my stomach, and as delicious as her cologne smelled, it only heightened my nausea.

Eyes focused on the surrounding rooms kept me from staring at the way her ass moved in her black slacks. Undoubtedly firm, given what little I'd seen of those ass-hugging jeans she'd worn back at the cliff.

Stop it, Jennie!

Wincing, I mentally insisted that my eyeballs not veer back for another look, but that was the problem with my brain. Once I'd thought it, I couldn't unthink it, and it became a dangerous game of trying to ignore the issue.

Thankfully, we reached her office, where she stuffed a skeleton-looking key into a black iron lock and swung the door open on a creak. The interior was relatively small but brimming with medical texts and journals that lay in neat stacks on her desk and floor.

This person liked tidiness.

I took a seat in one of the chairs across from her, as she fell into her seat on the other side of the desk.

"Miss Kim, I'm allotting fifteen minutes for this meeting. Make them count."

I didn't waste any time. "I understand Noctoma is rare in humans. How was it introduced?"

Easing back in her chair, she steepled her fingers, staring at me, and I realized right then that I hadn't quite calculated just how intense her undivided attention would feel. How utterly consuming and threatening at the same time. "I will be covering the history of Noctoma in an upcoming lecture."

"I understand, and I am looking forward to that section, but according to your syllabus, you don't cover it until December."

She quirked a brow. "And?"

"Well, it's for personal reasons that I ask." Mostly, that the class was a full two semesters back-to-back, and I might not get the information I needed, if for some reason my tuition didn't cover a second semester.

Annoyance colored her expression, and she sighed. "In the colonial era, the disease was believed to have been spread by the natives, who shot the larvae using blow darts into those they deemed a threat. It's hard to say how many cases emerged after the fall of the tribe, seeing as the island remained abandoned for a number of years. It re-emerged about thirty years ago, when a wanderer camping in the woods stumbled upon the noxberries and consumed them."

"You're working on a cure for it, aren't you? In your lab? Is that why you remove the larvae?"

She stared at me silently for a moment, and as much as I wanted to look away, because goddamn this woman was intimidating, I didn't. "Your questions have begun to traipse a delicate line, as they relate to my activities."

"Sorry. I'm just curious, is all."

"Curiosity often leads us down a precarious path."

"You say that as if you've walked it yourself."

The corner of her lips twitched, and she leaned forward, resting her elbows against her shiny desk. "To answer, I am studying the organism to gain a better understanding of how it affects the human body."

Instead of blurting off the first question that popped in my head—namely, how the hell had my mother become infected?—I considered my words carefully. "Do you get many cases from the mainland?"

"No."

"If one were to contract it, though, is it spread person to person?"

"Rarely."

I frowned at that–how the hell else would my mother have gotten it? I'd never seen a noxberry in my life until I came to Dracadon. "Well, it must be."

"Are you asking questions, or trying to convince me, Miss Kim?"

"My mother died of Noctoma." I dared her to argue that.

"Our facility would have been the one to confirm such a diagnosis, if it had been properly diagnosed. What's her name?"

"It doesn't matter. She refused to see a doctor."

"And the autopsy?" she asked in an almost bored tone. "Surely, it would've shown evidence of Noctomal pathology.

If it had, it'd been encrypted in coroner language that I didn't speak. "What kind of pathology?"

"Bone striations and liver decomposition, most notably."

I couldn't recall seeing any of that. The most notable issue, aside from blood loss, was fluid in her lungs. "Perhaps they missed that."

Jaw shifting, she narrowed her eyes. "Is your mother from the island?" she countered.

"No."

"Did she attend Dracadon? Visit here? Live here for any length of time?"

I didn't like the way she was ruling it out before my very eyes, but I answered honestly. "No."

She gave an insouciant shrug that made me want to reach across the desk and smack her. "Then, chances are, it wasn't Noctoma."

"I know what I saw, Professor. Black worms. Like the ones in the Midnight Lab. I saw them crawl out of her body." I gestured toward my mouth. "Like they were trying to escape."

"Death can be difficult to process, Miss Kim."

Frustration curled in my stomach with the way she was trying to refute everything, like I had imagined it all? I'd gone too many years believing that lie. To hell with that. And to hell with her. I hadn't imagined any of it–I knew that now. "It was not shock, or hallucination. It was real."

Maybe I looked to be on the verge of crying, because she eased back in her chair and let out a long, exasperated exhale. "Very well. It was real. Unfortunately, I did not examine your mother, so I can't say for certain how she may, or may not, have become infected. I'm only sharing what decades of study have taught me."

Releasing a sigh, I nodded. I'd gotten worked up again, and she was right. Maybe I had gotten caught up in trying to convince her. "My apologies for getting upset."

"If I've answered all your questions, perhaps you might let me return to my work."

"May I ask one more question?"

"Of course."

My mouth suddenly turned dry, as the strong possibility of rejection needled me. "I wondered if you might have any lab assistant positions open?"

"Ross can direct you to available positions, but they fill quickly."

"I don't mean general lab. I mean …" Be audacious. "I mean working with you."

She didn't even give the question enough time to linger before she batted it away with a swift, "No. I'm afraid not."

"It wouldn't have to be the whole semester." I scooted forward in my chair, the desperation goading me to sound like a whiny beggar. "I'm happy to be a dishwasher, or prep reagents. Maybe just–"

"No, Miss Kim. I do not take student assistants in my lab, in any capacity. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to return to my wor–" she let out a grunt, and her hands flew to either side of her skull. Eyes screwed shut, she clenched her teeth, and a hiss of a moan was the only sound she made before tumbling from her seat to the floor.

"Professor!" Dropping my bag, I rounded her desk to find her curled into herself, her hands covering her ears.

"Fuck!" she pressed the heel of her palm to her temple.

My whole body shook with adrenaline, my heart racing in my chest. The scenario took me back to the nights when my mother would suffer horrible headaches. Not knowing what else to do, I dropped to the floor beside her. A look of agony claimed her face, her body shaking uncontrollably.

Seizure. It was a seizure.

I mentally ran through the checklist of what I remembered reading about seizures in one of my medical textbooks. Remove anything dangerous.

I pushed her chair out of the way, and as I glanced around the room, tip number two came to mind. Nabbing her suitcoat draped over the arm of a leather couch, I crumpled it into a ball and gently pushed it under her head. After that, I loosened her tie and unlatched the top two buttons of her shirt. While part of me felt strange, another part didn't feel or think, at all. I ran on pure adrenaline in that moment.

She trembled and shook, as I gingerly pushed at her shoulder to turn her on her side.

Biting my nail, I looked up at the clock to see that it had already lasted about four minutes. I slipped my hand in her, just to let her know I was there, as I'd always done with my mother.

She whispered something, and I leaned forward, trying to make out what she'd said. "Impervious," she whispered again.

Impervious? Had I heard her right?

The trembles slowed. Her breathing slowed. Beads of sweat had gathered on her forehead, and her face had turned ghostly white, but it seemed the seizure had subsided.

"Professor?" I gave her hand a light squeeze, and her eyes shot open.

She jerked back, nearly cracking her head on the desk. "Don't touch me! Don't fucking touch me!" The command arrived as a growled warning, and I tumbled backward, kicking myself away from her.

"I'm sorry. I … I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Wearing a mask of confusion, she pushed to a sitting position and looked around. As her gaze landed on her balled-up coat, her jaw hardened. "That's a five-hundred-dollar coat crumpled on the floor," she said, tossing the jacket onto her chair. "Next time you decide to crumple something, consider using your own."

Any sympathy I may have had drained out of me right then. "Seriously? You just had a seizure in front of me, and you're worried about a little dust on your coat?"

"Welcome to my Tuesday. This is nothing new." She pushed to her feet until standing over me.

I didn't like the dynamic of her looking down on me right then, so I jumped to my feet, as well. "I guess I shouldn't have bothered to stick around, then."

"I guess you shouldn't have."

Assholeprickbastard! "Forgive me for being a decent human being."

"A decent human being would've given someone some dignity by leaving when she was excused." She ground the last word through her teeth.

It occurred to me then, she wasn't angry at me, per se, but perhaps a bit embarrassed. In spite of the urge to verbally duke it out with her and not back down, I softened my voice. "My apologies. I sprang into action without much thought."

"You certainly–" Her jaw hardened again, the muscle ticced, as she clearly fought to restrain her words. On a sharp breath, she buttoned her shirt and adjusted her tie back into place. "A bit overboard."

With a shrug, I clasped my hands so that she wouldn't see how badly I was shaking right then. "I was just trying to make you comfortable, is all. Ma'am."

Her eyes skated to me on the last word, her jaw shifting. "You may leave now, Miss Kim."

With a quiet nod, I gathered my bag. I didn't know why I felt disappointed leaving her office, aside from the fact that my plan to assist in her lab had been savagely turned down. It wasn't like I was expecting her to wrap me in a hug for sticking around through all of that.

A thank you would've been nice, though.