I waited.

I had to.

If I didn’t wait, Danny would catch me doing what he’s been telling me not to do.

He didn’t want my help at all, which was a bit frustrating. I was gonna do whatever I could to help fix Jacob because he was just as important to me as he was for Danny.

Once I knew I could get out of my room with Ivy’s blood and samples, I rushed to a lab as far away from Danny’s office as I could get and locked myself with the manual lock, which would only hold off Danny for a few minutes. It was sort of horrifying how fast he got mad about stuff.

I tried to ignore that fear and hung up all my notes on a board. I jotted down all the stuff I knew about where they were from and all the variables.

A lot of my notes were from Danny because I spent time copying them when he wasn’t aware of my presence.

I had plenty that were my genuine thought processes, opinions, and ideas.

I considered some things as I ran Ivy’s blood and crossed out variables that weren’t useful.

Blood type: no.

Ethnicity: no.

Nothing was making much sense or being very helpful. I extracted the virus from Ivy’s samples and spent the rest of the night watching it mutate and trying different things to kill it.

None of that was working either.

Before I knew it, it was morning and a bang rattled the door, startling me.

Someone must’ve reported that the lab was in use after hours, which was okay, but I didn’t put it in the system that I was there. And, I could tell it was Danny at the door.

“Lin, are you in there?” he questioned.

I didn’t respond until his fist hit the door, so I went to the door and opened it a little bit.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Working.”

“Lin, what have I told you about messing with my work?!”

“I’m not interfering with anything you’re doing. I’m just doing personal research.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kaleb Reed!” I shut the door and forced it shut as he started busting it down. “Kaleb, you better let me in there!” I locked it and ran to get my things before he broke in, terrified of what he’d do to me without Jacob being around.

I crammed everything into my backpack that I kept my stuff in and heard the door splinter.