Page 9 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

Fou r

Nine Out of Ten

Nori

R yan tapped on his phone screen. “Are you sure the location is correct? It wants us to turn right and—I mean, unless one of you is smuggling a magic carpet with you—”

“Hand it over.” Nori grabbed the phone from his outstretched hand to locate the pin she’d saved earlier.

While online maps were usually pretty accurate there, navigating the hills could be tricky at the best of times.

“Keep to the right, Fehim. There should be a fork about half a mile ahead. You’d be able to see the cottage from there. ”

Fehim nodded in the rear-view mirror. “How’s he holding up?”

“Still asleep.” She brushed Vir’s forehead with the back of her hand. “No fever. That’s good.”

The man hadn’t stirred throughout the near eight-hour drive from Delhi to Shoja—a remote village in the misty, green hills of Himachal Pradesh, where Nori’s maternal grandparents had once lived.

And where their house now stood, empty and full of memories, handed down to Nori after her grandma’s recent passing.

She gave Vir’s shoulder a tentative nudge and watched his brow crease momentarily before it flattened again. She left him be, then brought her face close to the partly open window on her side to suck in a deep fill of the crisp, clean mountain air.

Early November chill was just starting to set in. Nori loved everything about the season.

From early winter rains to thick walls of fog that conjured the illusion of her walking on clouds while she sauntered down swooping, sloping, hilly pathways at dawn.

And the crisp afternoon sun and warm blankets afterwards.

And ice-cream that never melted even as she savored it at a leisurely pace.

And unlimited cups of masala chai, their spicy notes soothing at every sip…

The winters she remembered spending at the cottage with her grandma had always been the best. She smiled at the prospect of catching the season’s first snowfall in another month’s time.

Suppressing a shiver, Nori pulled the hood of her stolen sweatshirt up and turned to Vir again. “Vir, we’re here.”

His eyes fluttered open at the nudge this time. And as he blinked at her in a slow, dazed fashion, she noticed just how outrageously long his eyelashes were. The impulse to pluck one just to see if they were real made her internally balk at herself.

He blinked again, even slower this time. Like a cat’s slow-blink.

Ryan stepped out first to push the purple wrought iron gates open, allowing Fehim to drive them up to the house. The garden lights should’ve turned on automatically as they drove in, but the whole place remained steeped in darkness.

Nori hurried up the porch steps and punched in her door’s key code, thankful for battery powered technology. Once inside the living room, she switched her phone’s flashlight on to look through the contents of the electrical panel before turning on her heels to step out again.

“The generator is out of fuel,” she announced, reappearing a moment later .

“There’s a gas station a few miles from here,” Fehim said, showing her the map on his phone. “We’ll get the fuel there. And hopefully, some food as well. Whoa—” He caught Vir as the latter began swaying on his feet.

“Nor,” Ryan said, eyeing Vir’s slouching form skeptically. “How many of your mice made it out alive after the shot?”

“At least nine out of ten survived in all the qualifying rounds.” She crossed her arms against her chest. “Why?”

“The odds look good for your next nine subjects, then.”

“Dude…” Fehim elbowed Ryan. He half-dragged Vir to the three-seater couch nearby, where Vir folded like a deflated balloon as soon as his body made contact with its surface.

“Not funny.” She narrowed her eyes pointedly at Ryan.

“Alright, sorry.” He laughed. “I’ll drive.” He added to Fehim.

She had a feeling he wasn’t sorry at all, but she was too tired to bicker. Vir showed no signs of having heard the exchange at all. The man lay so still; she wondered if she’d calculated wrong, if Ryan might be right after all.

Was he not going to make it a single day with the mites?

Had his heart already progressed much further into failure than she’d anticipated?

Was his family going to blame her for killing him by dragging the sick man away from his ward?

Forget her career, what if she was imprisoned for abduction and murder?

She clearly hadn’t thought this through.

“Not dead,” Vir groaned from the couch; his eyes remaining closed. “Just tired.”

She let out a quiet huff, swallowing the dryness in her throat.

“Let’s go,” Fehim said, walking through the front door.

“Be right out,” Ryan called after him. Turning to Nori, he jerked his head towards the other door far on his left. “Can we talk? In private.”

“What is it?” Nori asked, pressing the door closed once they were in her grandma’s old study.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked softly. “You’d be alone with him. For months.”

It took her a few seconds to reign in the panic before she turned around to face him. “I’m sure. He is my subject. I’m not scared of him. ”

He eyed her quietly for a moment. “I know you’re not. I’m sorry, I wish I could stay.”

“You can’t disappear in the middle of your semester.” She couldn’t ask him to drop everything and hide away with her for he r work. But a small unreasonable part of her hoped he’d do it, anyway.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” she mumbled, deflated, before continuing in a lighter tone. “It’s all good, really. From what I know, he seems like a good person. It’ll be fine, really.”

A shadow flickered across his face. “You always assume everyone’s a good person, Nor. Just use him as your lab rat and don’t bother empathizing too much.”

“What are you—?”

“I didn’t want to mention this earlier,” he interrupted.

“But since he’ll be staying here… You should probably know he’s a snob, always looking down on people.

Thinks he’s too good for everyone. He doesn’t even have friends as far as I know.

Honestly, I don’t see why Fehim hangs out with him, either.

Pities him, maybe. All I’m saying is, don’t be too soft.

Let him know who’s in charge right away and keep reminding him that his survival lies in your hands. ”

“Okay, okay.” She shook her head. “Guy’s an asshole. Stay away. I’m not five, Ryan. I can take care of myself. Go on now, Fehim’s waiting for you.”

He glared at her with his brow raised so high, it all but disappeared into his hairline. She crossed her arms, matching his expression. After all those years, how he still thought he could win at this against her was ridiculous.

“Fine.” He sniffed, squinting through a pair of watery brown eyes only moments later. “There’s a terrible draft in this room, by the way. Dried out my eyeballs.”

“Sure there is.”

It started drizzling as Ryan and Fehim drove off.

Back inside, Nori rummaged through her backpack for the infrared thermometer she’d packed earlier and pointed it at Vir’s temple. He still didn’t have a fever, so that was good. Satisfied, she brought out a blanket from the other room and watched his eyes flutter open as she draped it over him.

She scurried away from his quiet gaze and into the kitchen to open and close the cabinets one by one, pretending to look for food in the pantry.

There wasn’t any. She’d emptied the shelves before leaving for Delhi earlier.

She wasn’t supposed to be back so soon. She wasn’t supposed to be back with a man .

Swallowing the rising panic in her chest, she sucked in a deep fill of air while her hand hovered over the cutlery drawer.

The cottage was her happy place. Her safe place.

One she wasn’t too keen on sharing with a strange man.

For weeks—months, likely. She’d been trying not to think about it throughout the drive, but now that they were there…

the gravity of what she’d done—what she was about to do—was finally sinking in.

Ryan was going to leave with Fehim in the morning.

And then she’d be left alone with Vir. Her stomach churned painfully, and she slammed the drawer closed with a little more force than necessary.

A moment later, ignoring her thoughts and Vir’s eyes as they followed her around the room, she returned to the couch to perch stiffly at the other end with her laptop balanced on her thighs.

Soon enough, her fingertips were flying across the keyboard, making notes, while her hands itched to work with some live human data sets.

She’d waited patiently for far too long.

Vir’s soft snores pulled her out of her thoughts. She turned to look at him and his slightly parted mouth, and Ryan’s warnings from before started echoing in her head. She looked away, her thumb grazing the chunky vinyl zipper of her stolen sweatshirt.

A half hour later, her phone buzzed with Ryan’s name flashing on the screen.

“I was just about to call you!” she whispered into the phone, tiptoeing away from the couch. “Where are you guys?”

“We’re pretty far down, Nor,” Ryan replied. “It’s pouring here. They’ve just issued a land-slide warning and closed off the roads. We don’t know when they are going to re-open.”

“Oh.” She was safe. She had nothing to fear.

“Nori? Hello? You there?”

“Yes,” she answered after a pause. “You should go on then. There’s no point in waiting. The power should be back soon, anyway.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay? What about food?” The sound of seatbelts clicking in the background accompanied his questions .

“I have ramen here. Don’t worry,” she lied. “My phone’s battery is about to die. Drive safely. I’ll call you once the power’s back on.” She tapped the end call button and half a second later, her screen went black.

She hadn’t factored death by starvation as a potential risk when she’d decided to sneak Vir out that morning.