They walked up to their respective doors, only to discover they didn’t have their keys.

“Oh man, we left the keys inside,” Brian said, watching Noah tug ineffectually on the handle. “How do they expect us to get in?”

Noah looked around. “Do you know how to pick a lock?”

Brian rubbed his hands together. “How hard can it be?”

Noah glanced over to see what the girls were doing, just in time to see them disappear around the side of the building.

“Uh, I think May and Leah are walking around back,” Noah said. “I guess the back door should be open, right?”

“Oh. Good idea,” Brian said, pulling his eye back from the keyhole. They followed the girls around the building to the back entrance, which was indeed unlocked.

“That’s not very secure,” Noah said as they walked inside.

“It’s convenient for us,” Brian said with a shrug.

Noah noticed his cold bowl of ground beef and green beans was still sitting on the table. He grimaced at it and quickly threw it in the trash.

“Hey, I was going to eat that!” Brian complained, then laughed at Noah’s incredulous look.

“Yeah right,” Noah said. “I bet you wouldn’t eat that for a hundred bucks.”

“That sounds like a great deal. A minute of pain and misery for that much cash? Easiest decision of my life.”

A tapping at their back window caught the boys’ attention, and they both looked towards the sound. Sophie was standing right outside the glass with a big smile. She saw them looking and gestured for them to come out.

“Want to go see what she wants?” Brian asked.

“Well, it would just be awkward to ignore her now.”

They joined her outside.

“For all the fuss those health workers put up, I sure didn’t expect to see you all back here so soon,” she said. “What happened?”

There was a gleam in her eyes that Noah hadn’t noticed earlier, and she was all but jumping up and down.

“A lot,” Noah said. “What’s got you so worked up?”

“Look at this,” she said brightly, clearing her throat and letting out a cough. Dust was expelled from her mouth.

“You seem awfully happy to have come down with our weird illness,” Noah said.

“Oh, can you tell?” she grinned. “Why on earth would I be happy about getting a sickness that mysteriously lets you survive impossible conditions? Or have you both forgotten that I’m scheduled to kick the bucket in a couple hours?”

Noah and Brian stared at her.

“You think this is your free pass to surviving the Wager?” Brian gaped. “I don’t want to put your hopes down, but… that seems unlikely.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“That’s okay. I’m fine with unlikely,” Sophie said. She skipped ahead of them towards the picnic table. “Come on, I already got Leah and May out here. I wanna tell them the good news.”

Noah watched her hop into a seat at the table and turn to the girls excitedly, blowing dust all over the table.

“Imagine how crazy it would be if she’s right,” Brian said.

“Well, completely ignoring the side effects that may or may not include eating people, nobody would be able to prove whether it was just her getting lucky with the Wager or if our sickness actually saved her life,” Noah said. “I bet it would spark a lot of studies, though. If she’s lucky enough to survive past tonight, the poor girl is going to be a huge target for that Insight testing place. She’ll be in there right after us.”

“What testing place?” Sophie asked curiously, overhearing the last few words and turning to face them.

“Oh, the big shady place down in the city,” Noah said. “Didn’t you say your parents live nearby? If you grew up in the area you’ve probably heard of it.”

“The Insight Labs medical campus?” She asked, recognition sparking in her eyes. “Hold up, you guys are going there? You think I’ll be sent there?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure about you, but we’ve all been scheduled for testing there tomorrow.”

Genuine fear spread across her features, and she looked wordlessly between the four of them.

“He’s right,” Leah said with an angry shrug. “Doctor’s orders.”

Sophie scowled. “What kind of lousy doctor sends their patients to that kind of place?”

“One who is too scared for her own life to give a shit about anyone else,” Leah spat out.

“Scared for her own life? Oh, did she get the sickness?” Sophie wondered.

They all nodded.

“What’s she so scared about? Honestly, it’s misleading to call it a sickness. It’s a miracle.”

“Tell Dr. Jansen that,” Brian muttered. “She didn’t even know that the sickness might make you go crazy- I don’t think she did, anyway- and she still didn’t hesitate to throw us at Insight Labs at the first sign of danger.”

Sophie narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘crazy’?”

“Well, there’s this one infected kid that tried to eat our driver,” Brian said. “It might not be related. Maybe.”

“It’s related,” May said.

Leah shot her a look. “How do you know?”

“I nearly took a bite out of Dr. Jansen when she cut my arm,” she said.

Brian scooted away from her with a panicked look.

May scowled at him and added, “But it was only for a second. It caught me by surprise, you know? I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t want to do that. Like she wouldn’t taste good. Obviously, I mean, people wouldn’t taste good…” she trailed off.

Leah elbowed her. “What did I say about telling me when you want to eat people!”

May looked away. “I hoped it was just a momentary weird thing,” she admitted.

“Well, do you still feel hungry?”

“Not around you guys,” May said. “Honestly, I was fine until we got into the ambulance after we hit that kid. The drive here was terrible.”

“You think it’s because we’re all infected too?” Noah asked. “I mean, the goal of any disease is to spread itself. Maybe it has a built-in function to keep you from going after anyone who also has it.”

“But that would mean Dan’s infected,” May said uncertainly. “And he said he wasn’t feeling numb.”

“We didn’t get numb until a few hours after we got the sickness,” Noah reminded her. “If he’s been wearing the suit for a while, he won’t have even noticed that he’s breathing out dust ‘cause there’s a gas mask built into the thing. He could have gotten sick from someone else when he took the suit off, and then before he could notice the symptoms, he had to put the thing back on to pick us up again.”

“Okay, so Dan’s basically confirmed to be infected,” Brian said.

Noah shrugged. “Maybe not. The other option is that the hazmat suit protected him and made him look less tasty to May.”

May grimaced at Noah, but he only shrugged at her. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening here. The sickness spreads faster than fire on dry tinder. If people aren’t careful, it won’t just be an issue on our campus. It’ll be everywhere. The current situation is going to look like a little puddle of water next to the nuclear blast site that we’ll be dealing with.”

Silence settled over the table.

“Oh, boy,” Brian said finally. “This is going to get so bad.”