Conundrum

Part 21

Lydia blinked. Her fingers, wrapped precisely around a plastic pipet, held its end over the beaker in front of her. They ached, so she put the pipet down on a petri dish. At least nobody had seen her staring off.

She looked around the empty dorm. Of course it was too cramped to really accommodate two people like it had most of the school year, but whenever she considered that it was just her now her spine felt like webbed ice. Spencer had never been loud or drawn very much attention to herself, which made it all the easier to forget she wasn't here and all the harder to digest.

At least twice a day since, Lydia could have sworn she spotted the agent who arrested Spencer in some corner or just passing by. She tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. Maybe she was going crazy. She should finish working before Jamie gets back.

.........

Ugh! Why was the corrosive element not working faster? Lydia peered at the beaker from the opposite side of the counter, eye level with it now. How many more catalysts could she possibly try before she ran out of known Earth materials? Maybe there would be something she could use in the chem labs.

Lydia's stomach groaned. She looked at the time. How had it already been three hours? She could eat later, this really needed to be wrapped up before Jamie got back.

.........

There was that icy feeling again, curling through her skin like a tunnel network underneath an ant hill. The mysterious beaker stared back at her from the corner of her fridge, daring her to touch it. It had no label, so it wasn't hers. Even if she'd forgotten to label it, she hadn't put anything in the fridge in a long time, and it was always separated from the food. Although... she hadn't really spent much time in the dorm recently, given how quiet it was. Maybe Raz was playing a prank on her. No, she always locked the door, nobody would be able to come in unless they already had a key. Jamie had a key, but he'd been mostly busy with his own projects as of late, that whole grocery / stair-climbing debacle, and then....

Her roommate had been arrested. Her professor - the professor had been brought in for questioning on the same day. Both from the same organization, the organization in the business of subtly making people happen to move out of their way. Slowly, she gave a general check of the fridge to be sure it didn't have any triggers before gently closing the door. Whatever this beaker held, it'd be best to keep it at a stable temperature. There was no telling what a drastic change could do.

Was it bad that she wished Jamie was back already?

.........

Lydia had managed to take a shoe box, an ice box, an old pillow, and 37 cups of ice and created a transportable case for the mystery beaker out of them. Now she had just the right and constant temperature that she shook considerably less at the thought of moving it. Good. There was no telling how vulnerable it would be to movement.

After four total layers of jackets, long johns, overalls, socks, shoes, gloves, hats, scarves, glasses, and aprons combined, she could only hope they would be somewhat equivalent to a hazmat suit. She didn't have permission to wear the school's suits, so in the interest of remaining inconspicuous, this was the best option she could think of. Carefully, Lydia reached out with a pair of grilling tongs and grasped the beaker. The tongs had a noticeable lack of grip strength to safely move more than two feet. Quickly she grabbed a dish cloth and wrapped it around the tongs. Shifting her transport box to the edge of the refrigerator drawers, Lydia reached again. She readjusted.... Grip achieved. The beaker should remain as close to a centimeter off the drawer's surface as possible - less vibrations or jolting to be concerned about but also less distance for it to fall. She was halfway across now.