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“They have enough harsh lines in their lives, Miss Morrow. They don’t need any more. It does nothing but discourage.”

Fine. He hadn’t lostallof his charm. She wished he’d take those damned glasses off though. No one had the right to look that alluring with nerdy glasses and a sullen attitude.

“Can I help you with something?” It wasn’t until he spoke that Atta realised she’d been staring.

“What? No. No.” Shaking her head too many times, she noticed the Dublin Paper on his desk next to a mug of stale coffee. “HPSC recruits professors at TCD for—” she read, but he cut her off, standing.

“That’s enough. Finish those marks by class.” And he shooed her out of the teachers’ room.

Most afternoons with him went by similarly, him brooding, her irritated. It had taken some time to work out her class schedule with Murdoch’s, but he’d given up on her observing all his lectures and missing her own rather easily after a time. It gave Atta an odd sense of pride that she’d at least proven herself enough to keep the position.

Most of her shifts at Gallaghers’ had grown slow and boring. When she asked Siobhan about it, she gave a noncommittal shrug, but there was worry etched in the lines of her worn face. She was quieter than normal. Reserved and reclusive.

“Are you all right?” Atta asked her one evening. “You don’t seem yourself.”

“Something’s brewing, pet. I can feel it in my old bones.”

“How do you mean?” she ventured rubbing at her arms that had gone dotted with chill bumps.

“Don’t be worrying, now.” Siobhan stood, looking older than Atta had ever seen her. “I don’t think we need you on tonight, pet. Go on home, I’ll be having a pint and lockin’ the doors.”

Atta swore she heard a childish giggle on the wind as she walked between the park and the Medical Building to Briseis House. She couldn’t make out much in the dark, but there were glimmers of lights, little bursts of iridescent shimmers floating about in the park.

* * *

“What’s going on out there?” Atta asked Emmy over breakfast one morning. There were loads of workers traipsing through campus, enough that Atta had noticed from their suite window overlooking New Square.

Emmy, curious, set down her tea and came to the window. “I don’t know.”

Gibbs burst through the door, carrying a crumpled copy of Trinity News. “Have you heard?”

Emmy and Atta exchanged a look before shaking their heads in unison.

He rushed over to the coffee table and spread out the paper. “They’re shutting down a section of the park.” He pointed to a black-and-white map of College Park, where it backed up to a row of trees bordering Nassau Street. “It’s not a large section, but they’ve got huge iron gates going up.”

“What are they doing with it?” Emmy asked as Atta bent in to inspect the article with the map.

“They’re using it to bury the Infected?” she screeched, shocked by her own uncharacteristic hysteria.

Gibbs, his eyes wide as saucers that lent her to believe he was also bordering on hysteria, nodded mutely.

“Why here?” Emmy asked, horror in the grim set of her mouth.

“They’ve always insisted the Infected must be burned. . .” Atta couldn’t halt the onslaught of thoughts. Who were‘they,’ anyway, making these decisions? Part of her thought it had to be Achilles House, but that couldn’t be it. They were a part of a larger whole, that much was obvious.

“I don’t know.” Gibbs sank onto the sofa, Atta and Emmy flanking him. “This is mental, right?”

Both women nodded absently, each lost to their thoughts.

When she felt she had command of her sensibilities, Atta read the full article, a knot of dread knitting together in her abdomen.

Hours later in Morbid Anatomy, Professor Murdoch was pacing around an open cadaver splayed before the class, but she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

“. . .Take the Plague for example,” he was saying. “It shuts down the organs, blackens the blood, resulting in death.” He walked a circle around the cadaver. “But the Plague seemingly chooses at random. There are no current indications of a rhyme or reason, like a typical disease, or even pre-existing conditions or signs of cancer”—he tossed his hand around in the air—“foul play, nothing of the sort. The Plague has made equal men and women of us all over the past six years.”

Atta scoffed, unable to stop herself or use decorum in her stressed state.

To her horror, Murdoch stopped and turned to look directly at her, one brow quirked, and she froze. “Do you have something to add, Miss Morrow?”