Maybe she’d been too hasty.
Milly didn’t think of herself as claustrophobic, but the long jog down a solid concrete tunnel with little more than the shockingly loud echoes of her own footsteps to keep her company was slowly getting to her.
The occasional faraway rumble of a train that threatened to come her way wasn’t doing a great job at calming her nerves either. It wasn’t just the fear of being hit by a train, but also that the sound they made practically deafened her while they passed. She was constantly looking over her shoulder or toward the ceiling just to make sure Meatcrawl wasn’t sneaking up on her.
So exhausting.
There was a lot to see. The place was riddled with vent shafts, maintenance hatches, and the occasional humming generator behind a locked fence. The biggest find came when the tunnel suddenly gave way to a subway station.
It looked a lot like the one she just came from in terms of layout, but there weren’t any people. Other than that the main difference was a bunch of construction materials that were just lying around in stacks like it was a storage room.
A ghost station? Cool.
Milly climbed onto the platform.
She was not the first to be here. Scuff marks on the tiles showed where some of the supplies had been pushed aside to clear a path. Good. If the place had been entirely undisturbed she’d have to go even further down the tunnel.
Now she just had to figure out where to go from here.
The station was eerily similar to the last one. Perhaps they were all built according to a standard model. It did make exploring a bit easier. Her first stop, the stairs to the surface, was cut short immediately. The exit had been bricked up. Then there were the empty storefronts. None of the branding was there, but Milly recognized some of them by location.
A Kiosk. A bookstore. A fast-food place. An empty lot for vending machines.
A quick peek revealed the first two were a bust. Completely barren. As they ought to be. She could also discount the lot.
That just left the restaurant. Oddly appropriate.
Milly tried the door. It was similar to the one at MoleMunchies, but unlike its twin, this one didn’t open when she approached it. Locked, of course. The matte glass made it impossible to see through, but when she cupped her hands against the glass she could see light from the inside.
Interesting.
Now, how to get inside?
She took a few steps back to survey the area.
No keys were conveniently within arms reach, but she did spot a stack of metal pipes among the supplies. That idea she’d shelve for later. The last time she tried to break a window it hadn’t gone that well for her.
Actually…
Milly grabbed one of the pipes and felt the heft of it in her hands.
Yeah, this would do nicely.
Even if she hoped it wouldn’t come to it, now she had something to defend herself with. The heavy piece of metal gave her a sense of security as she turned her attention back to the door... Now, what else? Maybe she could just force the lock open.
How secure could a fast-food restaurant be?
----------------------------------------
After a solid five minutes of prying, Milly regretted everything.
“Forget it!” Frustrated, Milly took a hard swing at the glass with the pipe.
The glass didn’t even get scratched, but it did bounce the pipe back at her with nearly as much force as she had put into it. The thing nearly took her head off!
Great! She was being bested by a locked door. It was as built to last as everything else in this dang city. No wonder they called it Bulwark Bay.
“Gah! I’ve had it.” Milly spun on her heels and stomped away from the door. She cast a look back, fighting the urge to take a running start at it on the off chance throwing her weight at it would do what a metal pipe couldn’t.
Above the door, a tiny little red light flicked on and then immediately off again. It was so brief that Milly almost hadn’t noticed.
When she approached to get a better look, she could only see the sensor that was supposed to detect movement and open the door. Waving her arms over her head had no effect. The light stayed off. But when she tried turning around and back again the light once again glowed red for just a moment.
A bit of experimenting proved that the light only seemed to activate when the scanner saw her face for the first time. That didn’t strike her as normal behavior. If it didn’t detect movement then was it trying to identify her? That gave her an idea.
Milly pulled out her phone and held up the picture of Doctor Vector.
Another brief blip of light was followed by a soft hiss as the door opened up.
“Jackpot!” Milly cheered and quickly stepped through the door into the main seating area.
It was an odd mix. High-tech equipment was installed on the crummy tables and booths that had been placed and bolted to the floor like any other fast-food restaurant. Most of the chairs had been stacked on top of each other against one wall to make room to walk. Various power cables were strewn across the floor and came together to collectively crawl over the counter to some unseen and unfortunately overtaxed socket.
She recognized none of the machines but they looked expensive. Glass tubes. Some kind of ventilator. A thing that vaguely resembled her grandmother’s sewing machine if it had been designed by aliens. And those were just the beginning.
Milly could not begin to guess at their intended function, but she knew one thing for sure. This had ‘mad science’ written all over it. Literally, in fact. The walls, tabletops, and any other flat surface that wasn’t the machines themselves were covered in mad scrawlings of what could have been math but was filled with symbols and letters that Milly didn’t know the exact meaning of, but she’d at least seen before. These were formulas of some kind.
As if all that wasn’t crazy enough, the text hadn’t been written on the surface but carved out like claw marks… Or teeth marks. Some of which looked eerily fresh.
Meatcrawl. It must have been him. But then that meant… This was it! While she didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish, this was proof that he wasn’t a mindless monster!
If only Niki had come with. She might’ve been able to make some kind of sense of the scribbles.
Milly snapped a couple of photos of each wall as evidence. But it was the most mundane sight that gave her pause when she turned to face the wall behind her. A simple coat rack, holding a half dozen gray overalls.
They met Ronald’s description of the disguises Vector and his group had used to traverse the tunnel without arousing suspicion. If those were still here then where was the group?
A cold chill ran down Milly’s spine. She had a good suspicion of what might have happened.
Now that she looked at the room with renewed eyes, small details began to stand out. The tables weren’t aligned properly, almost as if they’d been bumped into; their bolts were bent. The glass on this side of the door was smudged with handprints. There wasn’t any blood but while the floor tiles had been as dirty here as they were outside, there were noticeable swaths of the floor that were completely spotless. As if they’d been licked clean.
It might have been a mistake to come here. None of the articles about Meatcrawl’s attacks had mentioned casualties, but this… she was standing right where people had died.
A shadow passed over the door.
Milly nearly jumped out of her skin. “Gah!” She clasped her hands over her mouth.
Idiot!
To her surprise, the shadow shrank back as well.
“M-Milly?” Niki’s voice came from the other side. “Was that you?”
No sound had ever been so sweet.
“Niki? What’re you—Yes! I’m here. Hold up a sec.” Milly stepped away and waved her phone at the door. Only to find that no red light lit up on this side. Nothing budged. “Huh, I reckon there ought to be some other way to open it from here. You try showing the camera above the door Vector’s face.”
“Camera? …Oh!”
A moment later, the door slid open and Niki stepped through.
“Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Milly gave Niki a quick hug and then immediately moved a nearby chair into the doorway to keep it from closing. There was probably another way out, but she wasn’t about to take the chance. “The last people to get stuck here didn’t fare so well.”
Meanwhile, Niki stumbled a few steps further inside as Milly suddenly traded her for the chair. Grabbing one of the tables to maintain her balance, she noticed the machines on them. Her eyes widened as she noticed the writing all around them. “This looks like a makeshift lab! I recognize some of these equations from the S13 project… but why is it on the walls?”
“Meatcra—Doctor Victor, I mean, I reckon he’s the one that did this. He might not be as crazed as we thought. Some of this is recent.” Milly glanced down at the suspiciously clean spots on the floor. “Something must’ve gone wrong with whatever they were doing here.”
“That is insane! Is this why you…” Niki looked about ready to explode at the mere idea that the thing that tried to eat them was anything but a monster, but her eyes kept drifting to the writing. After a moment, she ran her hands through her disheveled hair, bringing some sense of order back to herself. “...Have you tried the manager’s office yet?”
“What for?”
“To check if the CCTV still works. It will give us a better idea of what went on here.” Niki pushed her glasses up a bit further on her nose. “Debating his psyche would only burn precious time. We do not know when Vector will return.”
Milly hesitated.
To her, the writing was literally on the wall but that would do no good if she couldn’t convince someone else.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Together they explored the restaurant.
The door at the back led into a hallway that connected the kitchen, the office, and the storage room together. The shattered remains of a glass door halfway down the hall was their only obstacle into the office, and that was easily navigated.
Milly stood guard by the door while Niki took a seat at the desk and opened up her laptop. After connecting a cable between it and the desktop, it didn’t take Niki long to find her way in.
“Got it. It will take a minute to download, then we can leave.” Niki leaned back in the chair, but it didn’t seem to relax her at all.
A quiet moment passed between them.
Quiet was good in the sense that it meant Meatcrawl wasn’t nearby, but Milly still didn’t like the silence between them. She rested her shoulder against the doorframe, trying to look casual. “Sooo, you come here often?”
“No, I usually avoid big dark holes in the ground where nobody can hear me scream, but this dumbass friend of mine just had to come to check it out. I could not let her go alone.” Niki looked up from the screen, a slight smile playing on her lips. “After all, how would I sleep at night if anything happened to her? I finally got used to her rhythmic snoring.”
“I do not!” Pink-faced, Milly stomped her foot. The adamant denial only made Niki smile more. Not the worst outcome, admittedly. “Still, that’s mighty kind of you. Sorry for running off like that.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Well, that was a pretty dumb idea that you failed to consult me on, but… so was testing you the way I did.” Niki placed her elbows on the desk and then rested her head in her hands. She stared at Milly for a long moment then let out a sigh. “I… would like to explain myself, if that is alright with you?”
Odd. Niki had been so eager to brush past it before.
“Uhm, you reckon right now is the best time?” Milly leaned out into the hallway and checked both directions. The coast was clear. Well, it wasn’t as if they were going to get out of here before the download finished anyway. “But… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.”
“Actually, yes, it is.” Niki let out a nervous chuckle. “Is that weird? Being here is terrifying, but it also makes everything else seem less scary in comparison if that makes sense?”
“It is, but I getcha.” Milly tightened her grip on the metal pipe. It pulled double duty as both a weapon and a security blanket. “Go on.”
“I had a close friend once. A boy I met online, Miles. We would tell each other everything, you know? Someone I could really trust, but that… did not work out in the end… he was not who I thought he was.” Niki looked down at the laptop. The glare from the screen on her glasses hid her eyes. “I felt like I was going down the same path with you and it scared me. You were nice but you also took something I shared in confidence and used it. Just like Miles. How long until you’d try to make me do things I’d regret? It starts small.”
Milly rubbed her elbow self-consciously. She’d been meaning to help, but she could not deny that had involved telling Ruth Niki’s feelings about her. Never mind reintroducing them.
“But I also enjoy spending time with you. I thought I could try being friends and just be on guard not to let anything sensitive slip. That failed because you noticed I wasn’t myself and confronted me.” Niki slumped forward, nearly hiding entirely behind the screen. “So, if I worried that you would be another Miles, all I had to do was make sure you weren’t, right? I’d just have to test you. It made so much sense in my head at the time, but afterward, I realized I was so busy making sure you’d be a good friend that I neglected to be one myself. I’m really sorry.”
It was starting to make sense to Milly now. Right before the gut-punch, Niki had yelled something about it not being her first time dealing with blackmail. That was why Niki had immediately deleted the video of Hilda. Ruth had even said it herself, she only represented what Niki feared. It was not anything as grand as mind control that Niki was truly afraid of; Any normal person could take advantage of Niki’s trust or transgressions to snowball into bigger things.
Milly squeezed the piece of metal in her hands even tighter. This Miles guy better hope she’d never run into him.
As if to add insult to injury, even their names were similar. Was Niki reminded of him every time she called her?
A beep followed by the clack of the laptop getting slammed shut drew Milly back down to earth.
Niki quickly finished packing up and then slung the bag over her shoulder. “All done. We should leave,” she said while she hurried to push past Milly back out into the hallway. Throughout all of it, Niki made an obvious effort to avoid looking at her.
“Niki, wait.” Milly grabbed her by the arm before she could get too far.
Thanks to the jolt on her arm, Niki involuntarily spun back around toward Milly. Teary-eyed, she twisted free from Milly’s grip. “What?”
“I’m sorry too,” Milly said while she held her hands up in a surrendering gesture. It hadn’t been the best idea to grab her like that. “I didn’t know what you were going through, but I knew it was something and I should’ve tried to be more understanding. I like hanging out with you too and—”
*CHUNK!*
Milly’s heart stopped.
Just over Niki’s shoulder, she saw the front door suddenly slam shut. There, already halfway done with oozing through the door slit, was Meatcrawl. Vector. Whatever! It looked like the door had shut on him when he devoured enough of the chair to make it fall apart.
He was bigger than he’d been last time and no less horrifying. A mound of liquid flesh teeming with eyes and teeth. Strangely, there was none of the screaming this time, just a low hum of murmurs and whispers that was barely audible to Milly even now.
“No! No no no!” Milly pulled Niki back behind her and then brandished the pipe with both hands. “How did he sneak up on us? Why isn’t he screaming? Dang it!”
“How would I know!” Niki hissed under her breath. “Keep your voice down, maybe he hasn’t noticed us.”
No chance of that. Milly could see the same pair of bright green eyes burrowing straight into her soul. He’d seen her. Perhaps even recognized her, as several of the mouths started to drool at the sight of their lost meal. One more chance at its helpless prey.
No! Today was different!
Milly stood up straight, doing her best to ignore the trembling throughout her body. She wasn’t hopelessly caught off guard this time, not so shocked that she could barely will her limbs to move. She came here knowing full well that this encounter was possible. So what if the dice came up snake-eyes?
“I got a plan, but we’re only going to have one shot at this.” Milly stared down the hallway toward Meatcrawl as more and more of his mass slowly oozed through.
From the hallway they were in, there were only the two doors that weren’t a dead-end; both were at the front. The first was the one they’d gone through, which led directly to the seating area where Meatcrawl was. The second was the kitchen door, which in turn led to the cashier counter, which they could vault to end up in the general seating area again.
“If we can lure Meatcrawl into the kitchen, that’ll clear our way to the front door. Look, it ain’t fully closed yet, that’s why he fits through. Maybe a chair leg is still in the way. We should be able to pry it open before he’s got time to get to us.”
After that, they could see about fleeing or trying to talk to Vector in his current state. Heck, Milly had wanted to do that anyway, but she was not foolish enough to try to talk to him first. Once Meatcrawl moved into the hallway past the first two doors, any chance of escape would be gone.
“S-so one of us has to bait him into the kitchen?” Niki asked while she gripped the bands of her bag so hard her knuckles turned white. She was trembling all over as though she was on her last nerve, but at least she was lucid.
“I’ll do it.” Milly held out the pipe toward Niki. It was a horrifying thought to purposefully bring that thing closer to her, but it was her own idea. “When I say go, you run out there and use this to pry it open. Okay?”
Niki closed her shaking fingers around the cold metal. She struggled to lift it from Milly’s hands for a second then pushed it back at Milly. “No, it’ll… it has to be you. You’re stronger than I am. I might not get the door open in time… I’ll distract him!” Niki balled her fist up and put on a brave face, looking like she was only halfway scared to death.
Milly felt her heart skip another beat at the sight. Yet it was a wholly different sensation this time, warm rather than cold.
Milly reached out for Niki’s shoulder but her hand found its way onto Niki’s cheek. Niki stared at her while Milly struggled for words. “Hey, uhm, I reckon that lunch date was pretty fun? If we make it through this, do you wanna maybe try for a real date next?”
Niki bluescreened for a second, taken utterly aback. Once she rebooted though, Niki gave Milly as hard a shove as she could manage. “And you reckon **right now** is the best time? Are you serious? Would you like to raise any other death flags before we go into this? Are you two days from retirement? Should I develop a conspicuous cough, maybe?”
Milly stumbled back out of the kitchen before she caught herself. “You’re right. Dumb idea,” she said while knocking on the wooden kitchen doorframe to ward off their newly invoked bad luck. Tough break for Meatcrawl, Milly felt like she might just die of embarrassment before he got to her.
“Yes it was!” Niki shouted before she turned her back to Milly and strode away, grabbing the metal baskets out of the deep fryers as she went. “...but I’m glad you remembered to consult me on it.”
Milly watched Niki vanish around the corner. She wasn’t exactly sure if that went well or poorly, but she couldn’t afford to dwell on it just yet.
An immense racket came from the kitchen as if the whole thing had come to life and gone to war with itself. Metal hit metal. Cutlery hit the ground. A heavy thud and crash seemed like the sort of sound a falling cash register might make. Niki was committed!
All of Meatcrawl’s eyes focused on the kitchen and it crawled toward the noise.
“Hey, ugly! Come get me!” Niki called out the moment before a handful of spoons clattered off Meatcrawl’s front.
Really committed.
Milly braced herself to sprint for the door the moment she heard the signal.
Meatcrawl came to a sudden stop. The eyes spun in every direction for a moment. Even as Niki was doing her utmost best to lure him in, his attention seemingly shifted to the nearby tables without equipment on them. He began to chew on those instead.
It wasn’t too strange, given that they’d seen him attack random objects before, but the last table he ate had been engulfed entirely. This was more of a low to the ground nibble, gnawing away at the legs that kept it bolted to the floor.
“…No way,” Milly gasped in horror as she watched him detach the table and shove it back behind him up against the door, then began doing the same with another.
“Milly! The bastard is barricading our only escape route!?” Niki’s voice shook more with outrage than fear for the moment.
Milly could barely believe her eyes. The irony of the whole thing was that she’d been right all along. Meatcrawl was intelligent! Cunning enough to know what they were trying to do and smart enough to use tools, even if it was crude. He wasn’t rising to the bait before he had them right where he wanted them.
She had to stop him somehow. Distract him in a different way.
“Vector, wait!” Milly called out as she stepped out into the seating area. She immediately noticed a shift in his attention as the green eyes snapped her way while the others spun about in their usual unfocused manner. “We know who you are! We can help!”
If he had any discernible body language, Milly wasn’t picking up on it, but at least he’d stopped barricading for the time being. That had to be a good sign. One thick pseudopod extended toward Milly. Thankfully, there was nearly a whole room between them.
Milly still took a cautious step back.
“Listen, we can figure this out, but you can’t keep us here. You don’t want to kill anyone, right? I read the news articles that covered your, uh, visits topside. They never mentioned casualties! Heck, they are always food places. Are you just—” Milly quickly shut up. Just the mention of food had made several of the mouths start snapping at the air. If she was trying to avoid any triggering words then maybe ‘hungry’ wouldn’t be her best pick. “…c-capable of communicating?”
The thick pseudopod jabbed in Milly’s direction, coming up short again while the mouths there stretched and strained in vain to reach her.
“Me?” Milly pointed at herself. It felt insane to have this conversation while everything about him was baring its teeth at her. Then again, maybe a normal conversation was helping? He did look more restrained than at the pizzeria, not that it was a high bar. “Sure, uhm, I-I’m Milly. I just moved here. Nice to meet you, Doctor Victor von Vector.”
The quiet murmuring suddenly erupted into the loud cacophonous screams.
Wrong answer!
Meatcrawl lunged forward with surprising speed. Faster than she could run!
Milly turned tail and ran down the hallway. She reached the kitchen door with Meatcrawl hot on her heels.
Niki was there, looking pale as a sheet while she still held onto a pot lid and a ladle. “Milly?”
There was no way they could make it to the front door in time. They both knew it.
Heart beating in her throat, Milly looked at Niki for a beat then grabbed the doorknob. “I’m sorry.” She tossed Niki the metal pipe and then pulled the door to the kitchen shut.
It was her fault Niki was even here. The least she could do was give her a chance. All Milly could think to do was run as fast as she could further down into the storage area.
Just behind her, Milly could hear the screams and scraping of teeth right as she passed through the storage room door and slammed it shut behind her.
It barely took Meatcrawl a second to buckle the hinges but it gave Milly a brief chance to breathe and survey her surroundings. She knew she was trapped here, but she didn’t have to make it easy on him.
The storage was practically barren. A couple of empty shelves and a freezer door… thick, metal freezer door!
Milly made a mad dash for the freezer, toppling as many shelves in her wake as she could to slow down her pursuer. A sound of splintering wood behind her told her she was not a second too early.
Once Milly reached the door, a quick pull revealed it was locked. Milly’s heart sank as she spotted the keypad on the wall right next to it.
Strangely a six-digit number was carved into the wall above it, but there was no time. Milly knew she was done for.
The screaming and shattering droned in Milly’s ears as she desperately entered as many numbers as she could anyway.
One. Seven. Seven. Not dead yet! Eight. Three. Still good? One!
With a click, the lock disengaged and Milly tore open the door just enough to slip inside. She spun around to pull it shut but tripped over something lying right by the door on the inside and slammed into the ice-cold floor.
Looking back, Milly saw Meatcrawl’s tendrils wrap around the door and tear it open further. As more light flooded into the room, Milly could see the culprit of her imminent demise lying at her feet.
A frozen man in a white lab coat and dark-blue skin. He was missing an arm. He must’ve had the same idea as Milly. The freezer had kept him safe from Meatcrawl but the cold had gotten him instead. A single word had been drawn in the frost of the door in shaky letters.
‘Sorry’
In any other circumstance, being this close to a corpse would have freaked Milly out. Not now though. She could not stop staring at his face.
Doctor Victor von Vector.
Meanwhile, Meatcrawl was slowly advancing.
They both had the same bright green eyes.
Milly crawled backward away from the door while her eyes flicked between the two of them. She’d missed something major. Didn’t Vector’s kid have similar features to him?
“Vanna, stop!” Milly called out while scrambling back onto her feet.
Meatcrawl came to a relative standstill. The main body no longer advanced even if individual parts were still every bit as ravenous, biting at everything within reach. The frozen goods on the shelves, the frost on the walls and floor, and the corpse of Doctor von Vector.
It worked! Kind of.
Milly could see the shift in demeanor. The big green eyes that had been so laser-focused on her had shifted down to stare at Victor. A forlorn look if ever there was one.
“I’m sorry, V-Vanna,” Milly held a trembling hand out like she was trying to talk down a scared dog. She didn’t stand a snowball’s chance if Vanna turned on her again. “I didn’t understand. Is this what you were pointing to before? I, I don’t think he can help anymore, but I promise that I’ll try, okay?”
Even as Milly spoke, The body was slowly being devoured while Vanna stared at it.
It turned Milly’s stomach. It had to be an involuntary thing. Vanna didn’t have full control.
“Vanna!” Milly shouted, causing the green eyes to spin back her way. Milly lowered her voice while giving her a sympathetic headshake. “Don’t look at it, okay? Look at me.”
Vanna’s eyes glanced down to her dad’s remains then quickly returned to focus on Milly. She seemed to understand. The screams dimmed back down to mutters the longer it went on.
Milly took note of that while she moved as close to the right wall as possible. “Vanna? I need you to help me get out. I think your control depends on how hungry you are, right? Look, I know this really sucks right now, but can you go to the far corner? I’ll slip out.”
Vanna did as she was asked, sticking to the left wall as much as she could even while pseudopods and tendrils tried to get at Milly.
Milly took the first chance she got to escape the freezer and slammed her back against the door immediately to close it.
The world’s most satisfying click told her the door had locked. Finally, safe.
Milly slid down the door as her legs buckled out from under her. Her ordeal was over and all she could do anymore was pull her legs up to her chest and cry into her knees.
Milly wasn’t sure how much time she spent like that, but she didn’t stop till a familiar voice with an Irish twang called her name.
“Milly, just relax. It wasn’t that scary at all, right?”
Looking up with bleary eyes, Milly saw the gently smiling face of Ruth. Behind her stood Niki flanked by Stella and Terra. They all looked relieved but nervous.
Despite sitting against an ice-cold metal door, Milly felt at ease. She knew damn well what Ruth was doing, and she couldn’t be more grateful.
“You are awesome! Could you tell me all about what happened?”
----------------------------------------
The rest of the day was something of a blur for Milly.
After she told ACE everything that had taken place, Stella had teleported her into the school’s medical office. Apparently, it was standard procedure to give anyone that came into contact with unknown bio-agents a check-up.
What they neglected to mention was just how long of a process that was. It took up most of her day and by the end, it was determined that she wasn’t even allowed to go back to the dorm but had to stay in the isolation ward for the weekend.
Thankfully, Niki dropped by to bring her some personal items and to make sure she was okay; her check-up had gone better it seemed. It was a painfully short and awkward visit under the supervision of a nurse, but apparently, they were now both officially considered ‘troublemakers’.
Principal Arkwright had demanded to see them on Tuesday for a debrief and disciplinary hearing.
Milly would have to enjoy the peace and quiet while she still could.
----------------------------------------
The following Monday morning at the track field, Milly was sprinting down the forty-yard track with all her might.
She was feeling great! Sure the weekend had been a little rough, but now that it was all over she was exploding with energy. Exercise was just about the only thing they would let her out of the isolation ward for and even then only during hours that nobody else would be around.
Turns out, running around when she had the whole track to herself was great. So much so that she’d actually woken up early to get some practice in on the track alone even though quarantine was technically over the second she’d stepped outside.
The way things were going, she could make the track team yet. Hilda might still be a bit sore about that whole video thing, but she was also someone that believed the team came first. As long as Milly showed her she was making a serious effort that would probably contribute to improving their standing.
Milly dabbed the sweat off her forehead while she checked her stopwatch.
00:04:90
Sweet! It was too bad there wasn’t a ‘bat out of hell’ division. She’d be nailing that. Of course, since she managed to outrun death over the weekend, setting some new personal bests ought to be no problem! It wasn’t exactly world record material, but she felt like she could get there if she kept at it.
Besides, she’d spent nearly all of her Sunday bored out of her mind in quarantine just to make sure she hadn’t been replaced with some kind of shapeshifting monster before they’d let her back into the school. She was looking forward to getting back to her normal life.
Maybe she’d leave that whole tracking bad guys thing to professionals for now.
Milly braced and took off back in the other direction.
Not that Vanna turned out to be all that bad, actually. Milly should probably make an effort to not think of their encounter as if it were one with a supervillain. From what Milly’d been told, Vanna was getting help from Principal Arkwright now. Mainly it involved a lot of food. From what little Milly could get anyone to tell her, they’d also been working on something else.
Passing over the starting line, Milly tapped the stopwatch off and skidded to a halt. She took a standing breather just resting her hands on her knees.
“Hahh, okay. That’s enough for one day.” Milly panted as she stood up straight and arched her back. It felt great, but it was a shame the wind had completely died down. So hot.
She picked up her towel and water bottle and then took off toward the dorm. She’d best grab a shower before class. She probably had time. Speaking of time, Milly just remembered to check how she did on that last pass.
“...Dang it,” Milly grumbled as she looked at the stopwatch and tried clicking it off and on a couple of times then tossed it into a trashcan on her way out. “What a time for the darn thing to break.”
00:00:01