MISSING LINK》t. briggs & v. stirling

Chapter《09》

Time was passing too quickly. Felicity didn't know what to do. She was trying. Dammit, she was trying so hard and nothing she was trying was working. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she wanted to throw something. Nothing she could think of was right. She was supposed to be good at this. She'd felt so important, so part of something back at the hotel when she'd been working with Dean, Lia and Sloane. For the first time in a long time she finally felt like maybe she wasn't crazy and messed up. For a second she'd almost felt special, useful.

But now, standing in the lab, watching as the minutes passed closer and closer to midnight, she still couldn't figure out what had killed Jamie.

Screaming in frustration, Felicity crossed yet another drug off her mental list of possibilities. She struggled to blink the tears from her eyes as she thought of her numerous failures. There was no way she would be able to test everything in time. For every compound she tried to test, her brain supplied seven more she could try that would result in similar symptoms. But no matter what she tried it all kept coming back negative.

Who was she kidding? Why did she ever think she would be able to identify the poison in the first place? What was it that her dad had said? Something about how the autopsy had yielded absolutely no results? So why had she been so certain that she was right? Every second that passed Felicity felt more and more like a failure, more and more like her mom had been right. Maybe she had just made the whole thing up for attention.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Angrily, Felicity yanked the glass slide out of her microscope and slammed it onto the table in front of her causing it to crack. She stared at the small thing, the jagged crack mocking her with just as much vigor as her list of failures had. She really just couldn't do anything right, could she? Why was she even surprised that her parents wanted nothing to do with her? She wanted nothing to do with her either.

Felicity picked up the broken slide, careful not to cut herself on the sharp glass. She blinked tears out of her eyes as she made her way over to the trash can. She would not cry. She would not cry.

A loud creak resonated through the lab.

Felicity yelped, dropping the glass slide in her hands and turning around to face the source of the noise.

Mr. Rochester—Felicity's other science teacher—gaped at her from beside the now wide open door, clearly just as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

"Abigail?" He asked, "what are you ..." he seemed to take in the rest of the lab—equipment out all over one of the tables and the small slide that had just shattered on the floor, "how did you even get in here?"

Vaguely Felicity remembered Mr. Solanace telling her that he shared this lab with the other teacher on the floor and not to throw him under the bus if anyone else were to show up. But she hadn't actually expected it to happen, especially not this late at night. "Um, I-" How exactly was she supposed to explain this? It's not like she could just tell her teacher what she was doing. Subtly, she stepped in front of the broken glass on the floor, hoping he wouldn't see it, "it was open?"

He shook his head at her, slowly making his way further into the room and setting his bag on the desk in the corner. "You know you can't be in here," he scolded, grabbing the dustpan—clearly she hadn't fooled him, "it's a safety hazard." He made his way over and knelt down beside her, breathing heavily as he swept up the glass before she could cut herself, "The rules are there for a reason." he continued, "Just two years ago during the winter dance a couple of students snuck into the lab at the school up the road and nearly burned the whole building down."