Laws of Nature [2]; Liam Dunbar

six: riley

Marlow stood in her dad's office with him, Stiles, and Malia. A few deputies had found eight more holes on the lacrosse field. Noah had already crossed out the school picture of the scorpion boy named Lucas. He also crossed out Tracy's picture. "Chimeras," Noah said.

"Two dead Chimeras," Stiles said.

"And eight new ones," Malia added.

"So, that's 10 in all," Stiles concluded.

"I'm thinking maybe 11," Noah said as he put a picture of Donovan on the corkboard. Marlow sighed. She had no idea how they would stop all of these kids. The pack didn't even know if all of them would be violent. Some of them might not even know what they are.

"Our station tech guys confirmed something for me," Noah said. He turned to face the kids. "They said, both the holding cell lock and cameras could have malfunctioned because of something electromagnetic." he went on. He grabbed the Dread Doctors novel that Malia had found in Tracy's room and held it up for them to see. "You said that, uh, these guys..." he said, looking for the right terminology.

"Dread Doctors," Malia told him.

Noah gave her a frustrated look. "Are we really calling them that?"

"So they broke Donovan out?" Malia asked, ignoring his previous question.

"It's how they got into Eichen, isn't it?" Noah asked.

There was a beat of silence as Malia and Marlow studied Donovan's picture. "Donovan's a Chimera," Malia said as she walked up to the corkboard. Marlow still tried to wrap her head around who the other Chimera's could have been. So far, the selection of teenagers had been pretty random.

"Yeah. But Is he a failure like Lucas and Tracy?" Noah asked as he looked at the picture as well.

Stiles turned and walked towards the window. Marlow narrowed her eyes at him. Something was off. Normally, he'd be hitting out theories constantly even if no one wanted to hear them but recently he had been quiet. Marlow had been so wrapped up in her own grievances, she hadn't even noticed her brother's change in behavior until that day.

She turned back to the board as Malia started talking. "If he is, he's probably dead," she said, grabbing the red sharpie to cross out Donovan's picture.

Noah gently grabbed her wrist before she could do so. "Not until I've seen a body," he told her. Malia dropped her hand and Noah turned around. "You're uncharacteristically quiet," he said to Stiles.

Marlow and Malia turned as well and now all eyes were on Stiles. "Yeah. Sorry, I'm, uh I'm just trying to think about it."

"Uh. These are all teenagers, right?" he asked. Marlow nodded. That was something she didn't understand either. Why only teenagers? "So, now shouldn't we be trying to figure out why these teenagers?" Stiles asked. "If the Dread Doctors, if they went through all that. Burying them, killing them, breaking one of them out of jail," Stiles went on. And suddenly, he was back to being the same Stiles Marlow had known all her life.

"They couldn't have been chosen at random." Noah chimed in.

"They had to have something in common," Malia added in agreement. Slowly, they were all catching on. And things started making a bit more sense.