Round Robin October 2020

1 October 2020

A finger gently caressed the area around a Do Not Touch sign. The big red button was calling to be pushed by his hand. His friend walked next to him and grabbed his wrist.

"It says Do Not Touch, Gregory. I think you would read and obey the signs in my lab," Emilia said, glaring at his audacity.

"Emilia, basic psychology wants me to push the shiny red button. Why don't you want me to push it?"

Emilia shuddered in horror. "Bad things, Greg. Bad things happen when that button is pushed." She paused. "Do you remember when I got this lab? How I got this lab?"

Gregory fought to remember back four years and shrugged. "Nope."

"Woe betide to you then."

Gregory shrugged and pushed the button, waiting, expecting, anticipating...

And then...

Nothing.

Nada, zip, zilch. Not a darn thing happened.

"Emilia! Why did you lie to me?"

Emilia looked at him sidelong. "I didn't."

Gregory was about to rebut with "You so did!" when the room began shaking and sirens blared over the speakers.

"Um, Emilia?" Gregory swallowed hard "We're not going to die, right?"

"Probably not."

Gregory deadpanned. "Probably?!"

"Well, let's make it more of a certainty, yeah?" Emilia asked as she ran out of the lab, making sure to grab his arm as she went.

Gregory put up a mild resistance to Emilia's arm grab but succumbed to the pressure the alarms put on them.

They safely made it out of the lab and were almost out of the building when Emilia heard it-someone yelling the word professor.

'Oh no,' she thought. 'Why does this student always bug me?'

Emilia tightened her grip on Gregory and ran faster, desperate to remove herself from the lab sirens and her student. The sound of the yelling only moved closer. Emilia couldn't keep up her pace and slowed down. The student, unfortunately, caught up.

"Professor Dlaun! Professor Dlaun! Thank goodness I caught you! The lab! The alarms were going off!" She spouted as she ran to Emilia and Gregory.

Emilia took deep breaths, not because she was winded but because this student somehow always triggered a migraine.

"Samantha. Samantha! Breathe!" Emilia directed at her exasperating student. "I know the alarms were going off. That is why Professor Xoi and I were running away."

Samantha deflated into her loosely worn zip-up hoodie. "Oh. Sorry Professors," she muttered, turning away.

"Samantha, thank you for letting me know," Emilia grimaced and Gregory elbowed her at her grimace. "I appreciate your initiative about the alarm."

Samantha perked up at her favorite professor's statement of appreciation. "Thanks, Professor! I need to go work on the report that's due in class tomorrow!" Samantha turned and called over her shoulder, "See you later!"

Gregory looked at his colleague in disbelief. "That is the student you complain about migraines from? She is the best student in the labs by far." His eyes asked Emilia the question he couldn't voice aloud, 'Why do you hate her?'

Emilia grimaced again, "I don't hate her. I ... I just-just-she rubs me the wrong way, ok?!"

"Ok, fine. Touchy subject. I'll back down."

Emilia glared at Greg. As if that was the biggest problem here.

Just as she was thinking this, there came the sound of an explosion followed swiftly by a bright light which engulfed Emilia, Greg, and the ever-so-slightly-less-than-frantic Samantha. An electric pulse ran through Emilia, and she heard screaming around her, realizing after a moment that it was her voice. Greg and Samantha seemed to have disappeared, swallowed up in the chaotic pulses of energy around her.

And then everything went dark.

The next thing Emilia was aware of was a ringing in her ears. Then her eyes hurt as if there was a bright light accosting them. She raised an arm to block the light as she slowly opened her eyes and found herself in a dilapidated cabin.

"You're awake!"

Emilia groaned. She wasn't sure what the first thing she wanted to see in this situation was, but it definitely wasn't her excitable student.

"Samantha," She ground out, trying to sit up but being greeted by a sharp pain in her abdomen. "Where are we?"

"Some cabin - Professor Xoi went to get water from the stream we passed. You shouldn't try to sit up. Oh, and when did you get a tattoo?"

"I don't have a tattoo." So, on the list of strange things since the explosion:

1. Injury to the abdomen - unconfirmed but likely
2. Mysterious tattoo - confirmed but unspecified
3. Dilapidated cabin - it looked to be pretty well built at least
4. Stream - the closest body of water to the lab should've been the ocean... 5 miles away
5. Greg doing manual labor - probably due to Samantha's nagging?
6. Samantha - Well, she was always strange...

It took some convincing, but eventually Samantha agreed to give Emilia some privacy. Of course that didn't mean she was quiet... oh, no, Samantha stood on the outside of the cabin door animatedly talking about... well she was talking excitedly about something, but between the closed door, rushed speed of elocution, and general Samanthaness of the discourse, Emilia wasn't really sure. She did hear something about a "pink elephant" and "kamikaze squirrels."

With Samantha out of the room, Emilia slowly moved around to check the status of her abdomen and see about locating the mysterious tattoo. Against Samantha's specific instructions to NOT sit up, Emilia chose to very, very, veeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrry slowly sit up and unwrap the-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Or not.

"What's wrong?!" Greg and Samantha burst through the doors, Greg carrying a bucket with water sloshing out everywhere and Samantha holding a buck knife - with a hot pink handle - with a "where's the bad guy?" look on her face.

Samantha slowly lowered her hot pink buck knife and glared at Emilia. "I told you not to sit up. Abdomen injuries are the worst on healing," she paused. "I would know, I got shot by my sister because she couldn't shoot to save her life." There was an awkward and horrified silence that Samantha broke with muttering, "I would not have her with me during a zombie apocalypse," and "At least it wasn't buckshot."

Gregory gaped at the two women in the sparse room. He did not drop the bucket of water on the floor, but his grip on the bucket seemed to be waning.

Emilia was in pain and made sure to keep herself prone. Emilia did not like pain and cursed her period when it came every month. Emilia kept breathing deep and barely registered what Samantha was saying about how she got her abdomen scarring. The scarred hole in Samantha's side, because, of course, Samantha was showing off her sister-inflicted bullet wound, looked kinda nice. It didn't heal horribly as Emilia had seen in pictures of other bullet wounds. Emilia really wished that Samantha wasn't going into detail about the kind of round that went into Samantha's side years ago, but Gregory kept asking her questions and Samantha kept supplying them.

Emilia broke Gregory and Samantha's intense conversation about scars up when she said, "Are there any pain killers here?" Emilia whined, "It hurts."

Samantha and Gregory looked at each other and then at Emilia. They both had the 'Bad News Look' on their faces.

Emilia sighed exasperatedly, "Of course not. I am stuck in this hell hole with NO PAIN MEDS WHILST IN PAIN!"

Gregory leaned over to Samantha and whispered, "Emilia does not like being in pain at all."

"I couldn't tell," Samantha sarcastically whispered back.