Chapter 28 - Rosa

"Are you staying all night?" Byron asks, his voice rough with lack of sleep. "Because I'm going to need more energy drinks if we're not leaving in the next hour."

I don't bother looking up from my station.

"I'm not leaving until I perfect the antidote," I say. "How many times are you going to make me repeat myself?"

Byron mutters something under his breath that I can't make out. Any other time, I might press him to see what he said, throw something clever back at him. But right now, I need every available synapse firing to help me figure out what it is about my antidote that's not working.

My formula is designed to find and coat the silver molecules, disabling whatever effect they have on the shifter in question. Logically, I know that silver shouldn't be causing this kind of reaction, as silver has been disproven as a way to hurt shifters for decades now, but nobody has ever worked with it on this scale.

Silver, in its most basic element, might be able to cause this kind of disruption to the shifting process. There just aren't enough scientists—and paranormal scientists, specifically—to provide materials on the subject. I'm flying blind.

When my legs start to cramp, and my eyes swim from staring at my computer screen, I stand up, popping my back and pacing back and forth, passing by the vials and machines. Byron is asleep in the corner, his head leaned back, his arms folded over his stomach, his laptop screen dark. The lab is eerily quiet at this time of night, and I wonder what Aris might have chemists down here doing if we ever did create a viable antidote.

What kind of work could I do down here after solving the serum problem?

Despite knowing it's only going to hurt, I turn on my heel, pushing the button to open the room where the affected shifters are held. I walk inside.

Thank the Gods; several of them are asleep, but I'm not interested in them. I walk to the back of the room, where Colin is laid out on his cot, a ventilator breathing for him. Maisie had trembled the entire time she did the procedure, having only ever performed it on dummies, but eventually, she got him stabilized, got an IV in him to hydrate him, and hoped for the best.

After my second try at creating an antidote went wrong, I hurried out of the room so the others wouldn't hear me sobbing. Bigby found me in the hallway and wrapped me up in his arms, running his hand over my hair.

"I could have killed him," I'd breathed, trying to calm down, trying not to cry so hard, but the image of his body convulsing was locked in my mind. "I'm trying to create an antidote just to prove a point—to show my skills, to—I don't know, just to have a problem to solve, but it's so fucking reckless! These are people's lives I'm messing around with."

"Rosa," Bigby said, lowering his face until it was level with mine. " Varun killed him. Varun is the one who took his life away—Colin knows that. He's not going to get his life back, gets to go back to his wife and kids and the rest of his family until we know he won't go back into a state and try to kill them. He needs to shift, and he can't do that until we have an antidote. You're trying to save him, and you and I both know it has nothing to do with your ego. Someone with an ego wouldn't have had to leave the room when they saw a subject in pain." He paused to take a breath. "Sometimes, when we're in the middle of solving a problem, it looks more confusing than ever—"

"Oh, Gods," I'd said, actually laughing and rolling my eyes at him. "You're not going to bring up the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture again, are you?"

Bigby grinned, putting his hands on my shoulders. His hands were always so large, warm, and always calming in a way I couldn't understand.

"No, I won't because it feels like you don't want me to," he laughed, "but you get my point. The last thing you should do now is give up."

Now, looking at Colin, at his still body on the cot, I'm not so sure. I caused this. No matter what Bigby says, I'm the one who made that medicine, who told Maisie the dose, who watched as it went into his blood stream.

I turn to walk out of the room, wishing he would just wake up, that I could be relieved of this feeling that I've killed someone when there's a gentle tapping sound to my left.

"Hey," the man says, his head tipped close to the glass, and I realize it's Percy—Bigby's lost teammate.

"H-hi," I say, taking a step toward him. We haven't seen him lucid the entire time he's been here. Some of the shifters go through varying levels of lucidity. Colin is lucid more often than not, but many of the others experience it far less often, and with less frequency as time goes on.

Maisie believes it has something to do with which version of the serum they received, which is why Percy's condition may be so bad. He was dosed with the near-perfect version of the serum.

"I'm sorry for scaring you," he says, taking a shaky breath and not meeting my eyes. "I mean, I'm assuming I scared you. We haven't met before, have we?"

"No," I say, heart racing. The others are going to be upset when they find out their friend had this moment of lucidity, and I was the only one here to witness it. My head proposes a myriad of things to ask him—who knows how long this lucidity will last? I should take advantage of it by asking him anything, but it's like I can't get the words out.

"Listen," he says, finally raising his eyes to mine, and I have to press my lips together to hold in a gasp. According to Bigby, Percy is a few years younger than him, but he looks at least a decade older, his face ragged, hair tangled and frizzy, skin wrinkled and dry, crinkling around his mouth and eyes. I force myself to hold his gaze as he continues.

"I know you're feeling down after what happened with that guy," Percy says, jerking his chin in Colin's direction. "But you're doing a great job. It's hard for me to understand the things that have changed, but I can feel that Aris is the alpha here now. That's good. And you're Bigby's mate."

My throat goes tight, and I nod.

"Bigby's the smartest guy I know. If you're his girl, I know you've gotta be way smarter," Percy says, giving me a crooked grin. "So, from now on, I want you to test any new stuff on me. Spare those other guys. I can take it—and, honestly—honestly, I think I might even deserve it. I have this terrible feeling—"

He squeezes his eyes shut, taking another deep breath. I watch in horror as he puts a hand to his throat, and I think that this might be it—his lucidity might be gone—but then, he speaks again, his voice coming out between his teeth.

"I have this terrible feeling that I've been hurting people. Humans. I don't know—my memory isn't there— it's like I don't exist inside my own head right now."

"It's okay," I finally say, pressing my hand to the glass. "Bigby has told me so much about you—that you're such a light in the group, and everyone misses you—"

I jump back, screaming when Percy lets out a roar and slams both palms against the glass, his eyes wide and crazed, his back arching at what looks like a painful angle.

Like his body is trying to shift, but can't. He slams his entire body against the glass, and I stumble backward, colliding with Byron, who stares at Percy with wide eyes before hooking an arm around me and pulling me backward out of the room.