Lynn was forming the stirrings of a plan. Pushing the mass of braids behind her shoulder, she continued searching through drawers. “Great,” she muttered to herself after finding at least one thing she wanted. Unscrewing the bottom of the flashlight took a short eternity. When it opened at last, she groaned in disgust. “It’s empty.”

“Yeah well if they left the batteries in it they would die. Check the same drawer,” Pablo offered unhelpfully. She knew he meant well.

“Check the same drawer for the batteries,” Lynn repeated in a mocking tone. She rifled through the drawer, louder than ever to cover her complaining.

How could she let herself fall for Pablo’s front? How could she pounce on him like a thirsty woman? Lynn cringed every time she relived the ‘lick your lips’ line. Worse yet, she couldn’t get a single second of their contact out of her head.

Visions of Pablo’s velvety, brown eyes behind low lids as he sneaked peeks at Lynn during their kisses harassed her non-stop. When she wasn’t treating a dire and devastating wound, her brain tormented her with their entire scene on perpetual replay. In slow-mo. And with an embarrassing soundtrack.

Lynn roused a happy, “Aha!” when she found the batteries in an altogether separate drawer. She wanted Pablo to witness the moment in which he was wrong, but when she looked up, he was staring out the back window.

She shrugged and continued her task while her inner monologue berated her. Sure, the kissing was amazing. Lynn would give him that, but it was only because Pablo had so much practice. He flirted with every girl in his grade. Despite all that, she always had a thing for him.

Pablo was nice and funny. It was hard to determine how smart someone was in this school. Most people hid it, aside from the Overachievers, of course. But Pablo was quick on the uptake and applied new skills with confidence.

He was handsome, and he hadn’t even grown into his face, yet. It’s a wonder the boy was single. Come to think of it, Lynn couldn’t remember him ever having a public relationship—

“What the fuck?” Pablo barked from the window. It was a small mercy as it broke the dangerous spiral of her thoughts.

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Lynn diverted her attention away from the flashlight to spare him a glance. “What is—”

Before she finished asking, she saw what made him swear. She stood and walked over to him.

They both watched in horror with mouths wide open as the daylight receded. The light was diminishing until only a deep shade of darkness remained. It was unnatural. Noon cast in a blanket of reddened darkness, for the sun’s rays still graced the smoky clouds. Yet it was dark. If the Icari could really leave the shelter of the building, then all was lost.

“Lynn?” Pablo asked. She turned to him, and he continued. “How many do you think are left?”

“Aliens or students in the building?”

He stepped forward and glanced through the doorway. “Icari.”

Lynn took a hair tie from her bag and began gathering her braids away from her face. She responded with the tie clenched in her teeth. “Well, if Nox is anything for Rayne to worry about, then we should definitely assume he came prepared for this…”

She slipped the weight of her hair through the tie and walked back into the Med Lab. Lynn tried hard not to think of him as a sensual piece of meat while they dealt with an apocalyptic crisis.

Pablo followed, asking, “Where do you think they came from?”

Lynn proceeded to the large cabinets in the left corner of the room. “What do you mean?”

“These anemic posers came from somewhere, right? But they can’t be out in daylight, so…”

“So how did they get into the school to begin with?” Lynn finished for him. Curious. Wait, did she just finish his sentence?

Lynn shook her head and rummaged through storage. She retrieved an industrial-sized bottle of denatured alcohol and fifteen empty glass specimen jars. She relished the mixture of confusion and surprise written on his expression.

While Lynn talked, she applied labels to the bottle and filled them with alcohol. “They had to come from somewhere underground, but where is an underground entrance to this school? Hand me your over-shirt, Pablo.”

Lynn wrote on the labels: Do Not Fuck With.

He complied. “What are you doing?”

Rather than answer Pablo, Lynn tugged his shirt with her teeth and ripped it into strips. She ignored how much it smelled of him.

“Hey!”

“I’m making a surprise. It’ll be useful for where we’re going.” Lynn soaked the strips of cloth in the alcohol and shoved them into the tops of the containers.

“That’s not what I meant. Here.” Pablo handed her a pair of scissors openly displayed on Dr. Jones’ desk. She tried to keep her eye roll to herself. He asked, “Where are we going?”

This was exactly the distraction she needed. Lynn shoved eight bottles and four shivs into a bag. She marched to the door with her mini armory, saying, “To find where the Icari are coming from.”

“What?!” Pablo exclaimed as he ran to catch up with her. “Hey! Wait a minute!”