Obsession by Marie Robinson

Author:Marie Robinson [Robinson, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It’s like Nikolai and Cordelia’s treatment set off a domino effect. Suddenly everyone is treating me like a failed fairy tale. I’ve woken up to breadcrumbs outside of my bedroom door, decapitated roses on my desks—the only thing left intact are the thorns on the stems, and shattered glass on my normal seat in the dining hall.

Every time I look at a teacher for help, their eyes dart away as if I’m invisible to them. The only thing I can do is push on. I take the blood samples exactly like Nikolai requested, and every afternoon I go to his lab. Sometimes he’s alone, other times other students are with him. If he’s alone, he drives me insane—innocent touches that don’t feel innocent, comments that make my heart race.

Today Malcolm and Frankenstein are with him, to my surprise. Frankenstein’s eyes linger on me as I stand in the doorway, and I want to think it’s because he cares about me, but he looks back at the tablet in front of him.

“The sink is full,” Nikolai says without preamble or looking away from his own tablet. He swipes something before speaking to Malcolm next to him. “This compound is stable for long enough that it might work.”

“Might isn’t good enough,” Malcolm replies dismissively. “For the disease to take hold, it needs to be stable once it attaches to the deoxygenated red blood cells. Otherwise the T-cells will break it down too quickly.”

“What if the disease doesn’t jump from bats to humans directly?” Frankenstein asks as I walk over to the lab sink. Like Nikolai said, it was full. Doing the dishes was always something I hated, the gross caked-on food on the plates or slimy grease made me sick. I would take the week-old pasta with cream sauce over the strange chemicals that coated these vials. I think half of this is blood, despite the strange coloring. Aren’t there regulations on disposing anything biohazardous?

“We’ve considered that.” Malcolm sounds annoyed at being patronized. “There have been no signs of other mammals seeking out blood for sustenance.”

“No herbivores, that is,” Frankenstein points out. I pull on the elbow-length industrial gloves and turn the water on, pouring a substantial amount of the stringent-smelling soap in the water. It hardly produces bubbles, but I’d wager it could break down a body given enough time. Maybe this is why Nikolai can put blood down the sink. Maybe nothing survives this soap.

I double-check my gloves to make sure there aren’t any holes. Nikolai isn’t worth losing a finger over, no matter how Mrs. Browning glares at me.

“Don’t cats go after the same prey as bats?” I mutter the question to the soap as I attack the soaking vials.

There’s silence behind me.

“Mary, get over here.” That’s Malcolm’s voice.

“Sorry, too busy being Nikolai’s Cinderella,” I sing out. I’m a terrible singer, which makes it all the more satisfying.

“Mary.”

I sigh dramatically and turn around, pulling off the wet gloves. There’s no way I can pull them off dramatically, not with how much the yellow gloves cling and schlep off of my skin.

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