Page 19 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

Nine

Roadblocks and Redundancy

Vir

V ir’s heart hammered in his chest, the gaps between its beats getting narrower and the thumps louder with each passing second, while his brain replayed the same scene repeatedly: Nori flinching.

Flinching as if she’d expected him to—

“Who hurt you?” he asked again, so low, he could barely hear himself against the echoes of the singular emotion he’d just sensed from her, sharp and clear and red— fear .

Nori winced, but instead of answering, she turned on her heels and marched away.

“Nori?” He followed her into the bedroom.

“It was a long time ago,” she replied with her back to him while rummaging in the closet.

“Who—”

“Can you please let it go? I’d rather not talk about it.”

Vir stood glued to the spot, unable to move his limbs as if his body were encased in concrete. Rage, like he’d never experienced before, boiled through him, ready to erupt at any moment. He’d never thought himself capable of murder, but he wasn’t so sure anymore.

“Stop that. Go change, please.” Nori frowned as she handed him a change of clothes.

“Stop what?” He didn’t budge. He didn’t know how.

“Stop glaring at me like that. You look like you’re going to burst a vein or something. Hurry and change. You mustn’t catch a cold.”

She grabbed his hand to lead him to the bathroom door. And right as her fingers wrapped around his, the contact sent a blanket of calm washing over him. Like someone had poured a bucket of icy water over sputtering, bubbling lava.

Too stunned to respond, Vir stepped inside and watched her slide the door shut after him.

A while later, he was still standing at the same spot, staring blankly at the door, when Nori knocked on it from the outside. “You can come out, Vir. I’ve already changed.”

Change… right… he snapped into action and hastily dried himself off with a towel, before slipping into the clothes she’d handed to him.

Now that his insides were no longer boiling, he could feel a slight chill under his ribs.

Chest chills always heralded the beginning of a bad congestion.

One he really didn’t want to deal with right now.

He layered up with another fleece hoodie from the closet and grabbed a blanket on his way out to the kitchen, where Nori was boiling water for tea.

She had a chunky yellow sweater on, a few sizes too big.

Likely her grandfather’s. He could tell she was still cold from the way she kept rubbing her arms.

“Go sit on the couch. I just put your blanket there.” He swiped the jar of tea leaves from her hand.

“The chai—”

“I’ll do it.”

“You have to drink some, too. The ginger and spices will help you warm up. ”

“Okay. Go on.”

His jaw slowly unclenched as he watched Nori burrow herself under the blanket, and the tightness in his chest began to ease. He’d never been this worried before. It was a horrible… horrible feeling.

He’d waited at first, watching the sky grow dark with grumbling armies of clouds that seemed determined to drown the entire hillside in their rage. But soon, he’d gone searching with an umbrella.

All the while, his brain had kept up a steady supply of deadly scenarios for him to browse through and feed his rising panic. For every unsolicited probability he’d pushed away, two more had taken their place.

Don’t lose her… find her… find her…. The words had played in his mind over and over and over. Words that were his, but also, they weren’t somehow.

And when he’d doubled back to check if she’d already returned, the sight of Nori’s small, trembling form trudging along the fence had almost brought him to his knees.

The prospect of losing her had thrown him into an unfamiliar abyss of helplessness and grief he hadn’t known how to maneuver himself out of. Evidently, his feelings for her ran deeper than he’d originally thought.

V ir rubbed his chest again, pulling the blanket up to his chin for more warmth. He didn’t feel any other signs of a congestion yet—no stuffy nose, no cough.

Last time, he promised himself, rising on an elbow to peek at Nori’s face while she slept. It was good that he did, because it allowed him the split second he needed to roll out of the way before she tumbled right off the bed to drop beside him with a muted thunk .

Over the past weeks, he’d learned it was safer to let her simply fall onto the mattress, rather than try catching her and getting head-butted in the process. Every few nights after this woman went to sleep, she chose violence. That she remained blissfully clueless about.

“Guaaa uaaaa…” Nori mumbled, frowning in her sleep, before the tip of her tongue briefly darted out, as if to savor the taste .

Vir suppressed a laugh while smoothing a finger over her brow. Then returned her to her bed, before settling back into his own.

By the time he dozed off, he’d already made up his mind. He’d cut a guava for her every day, as long as she wanted one.

T he woman with Nori’s face beamed at him, and his lips curved up in response. It’d been a while since she’d visited him in his dreams.

“You need to wake up,” she whispered with a slight tilt of her head.

Why? It was so peaceful… and warm. He shook his head, no .

Dream-Nori’s smile vanished, and without warning, she slammed both her fists into his ribs.

“Ow!”

“Wake up.”

It was getting colder. He didn’t like it.

“Wake up!” She yelled at him, but the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere else. His vision blurred.

“Wake up!” Panic tinted her words. “Get up! Wake up!”

Someone shook him violently.

Vir forced his heavy eyelids open to squint at the face hovering over his. “Norrree?”

“Vir!” She swore before moving out of view. “Stay with me, okay?”

Vir turned his head to the side to notice the early morning light filtering in through sheer white curtains. His arm was hooked to an IV, shirt unbuttoned, chest bared, and his legs lay elevated, with a bunch of pillows stacked under them.

“What—what happened?” he asked weakly, suppressing a shiver.

Nori stared at her laptop screen for a long moment before, finally, she let out a relieved huff.

“You’re okay. Everything’s okay,” she said, covering him with a blanket. Her trembling fingers reached under the fabric to wrap around his cold ones.

“What happened?”

“I was in the kitchen, making chai, when the alert on my phone went off.” She squeezed his hand. “You usually rise so early. But when you didn’t, I thought I should just let you sleep in. I should’ve…” she trailed off .

“Your phone?”

“I have a basic version of the algorithm mapped on there, with alarms to alert me if any of your vitals veer off the permissible limits.”

Vir nodded, unable to keep himself from being impressed, despite all his bones actively crumbling to dust while he lay there.

“Both your temperature and heart rate had dropped too low.” Nori sighed, leaning her head back against the bed.

He attempted to feebly squeeze her hand in response till he noticed the smell. “Is something burning?”

Nori sprung up and darted out of the room with a loud, “Fuck!” before yelling from the kitchen, “No, don’t get up! It’s the chai— was the chai. Its tar now.”

Relieved, Vir slumped back against the mattress. It’d probably take days to get the smell out, but he was glad it wasn’t something worse. He didn’t have the strength to do anything other than being a useless lump right now.

He turned his head to the side and groaned wordlessly into the pillow. He hated it. All of it. The needles, the passing out, being sick and weak and useless.

A breakfast of sandwiches in bed, followed by a long nap later, Vir was feeling a lot better already. But Nori only let him step out of the room once she’d rechecked his stats at least five more times, to be sure.

Against his unconvincing grumbles of protests, he now sat toasty warm, burrowed under two blankets on the living room couch.

His attempts at sneakily peeling them off were met with wordless glances from Nori, a certain kind that told him it wouldn’t be smart to cross her at all.

Not unless he wanted a third layer of insulation to bake him to death.

“I’ll let you take them off. Just wait till the food’s done,” she assured him, motioning towards the furnace he was in. “I’m making fried rice.”

“Do you know how to make fried rice?” He eyed the messy assortment of vegetables strewn over the counter with suspicion. “I can—”

“No.” She slid a large pan over the stove. “But I’ll get the recipe online.”

A while later, she set two bowls of vegetable-fried-rice on the dining table before giving him a curt nod, her expression business-like as ever. Finally rid of the blankets, Vir hurried over and took a tentative whiff at the steam rising from his bowl .

It smelled… good. He took a small bite and his eyes widened in surprise.

“This is good. I thought—”

“You thought I was going to poison you with my culinary skills, didn’t you?”

“No, never. I—maybe. A little.”

She chuckled before shaking her head in mock disappointment. Neither of them spoke for the next few minutes while they ate.

“We should talk,” Nori said once they were done.

Vir nodded, sensing undertones of excitement and… joy interrupting her otherwise neutral mood.

“I finally managed to bring the lag down to seven seconds,” she quipped.

“That’s how I got to you in time this morning.

Had the alert gone off with a delay of minutes, not seconds, we would’ve been in trouble.

I was going to tell you yesterday, but… Oh, and the even better news?

The mites have started showing redundancy. We’re at two percent already.”

His face must’ve betrayed his shock, because Nori’s mouth instantly stretched into a big grin.

“You really didn’t believe this would work, did you?”

Vir opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and settled for a wordless shake of his head.

When Nori had gone through the treatment plan with him over their discussions early on, she’d explained the nano-mites’ role in the overall scheme of things as something similar to a secondary, artificial immune system for his body that would keep his own immune system from further attacking his heart or the implanted chip, while keeping his vitals stable.

As he healed, his body would gradually start accepting his heart and the chip, instead of rejecting them, and the mites wouldn’t have to work as hard and in as many numbers.

They’d slowly become dormant—redundant—as their requirement went down.

Once they’re fully dormant, reaching a hundred percent redundancy, the experiment would be deemed a success, and Vir could live a normal, healthy life going forward.

That was all good in theory, but he hadn’t been holding his breath on it. But now…

He swallowed the rising lump in his throat .

“And don’t do that again,” Nori’s voice turned cold, lips pressing into a thin line, not matching her insides.

“Do what?”

“Go wandering off in the rain like that. You know how one bad bout of pneumonia might ruin everything.”

“Oh?” It was his turn to go icy. He tilted his head to the side and stared pointedly at her.

Nori matched his stare for a moment before her gaze unexpectedly softened. “Fine. It was partially my fault. Okay, mostly my fault. I’m sorry. But don’t ever follow me if I do something dumb like that again. I’m not saying I will, but… Promise me you won’t.”

He stared quietly at her for a moment.

“I can’t promise you that,” he finally replied.

Nori’s brow furrowed, and as she kept looking at him, her emotions took a melancholy turn again.

Vir sprung to his feet, whisking their empty bowls away to the dishwasher.

He wished he could turn it off—the horrible heightened sensitivity, empathy, curse…

So, he didn’t have to feel the rejection so solid and clear, like a ringing slap to his face, over and over again.

She’d said she didn’t hate him, but her insides told him otherwise.

And even though she didn’t seem furious anymore, knowing that the mere hint of him having any feelings for her was making her so incredibly sad… He didn’t know how to feel about that. Better or worse.

He felt worse.