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“M urdoch,” Lynch drawled, the stiffening of his shoulders the only indication he was surprised to see him there.

He hoped to god Atta was too far away to hear them. Surely she suspected him by now. He’d already shown her all this, doomed her anyway. Why not doom himself along with her? Take off the mask.

“What brings you here so late?”

pushed nonchalance into his tone as he bent over the poor Infected girl. Dead girl, he supposed. “I needed tissue samples and was unwilling to wait for them to be brought to the House.” He held up a specimen jar and looked at his colleague, goggles to goggles. Oh, the things they hid behind their fucking masks. “What brings you here?”

“It’s not every day we have a Stage 4 in our midst,” Lynch said, though he wasn’t looking at the cadaver. “I thought I’d come see it before they dispose of it.”

It . The neuter pronoun made him sick. She’d been a living, breathing person.

Lynch clasped his hands behind his back like a totalitarian dictator and strode closer, careful not to get too close, sully his pristine coat or his lily-white hands.

almost snorted at the thought. No, Lynch never did the dirty work himself. Never had.

He suspected the man looked rather green beneath his mask. Just to spite the fecker, used a nearby scalpel to cut far deeper than necessary and plucked out a piece of the heart. Black blood oozed from the tissue as he held it aloft just long enough to make Lynch shudder before he placed it in his tube and sealed it.

“Where will they take her?” ventured, looking as inconspicuous as possible, taking another sample from the lung and reaching for a syringe to draw a vial of blood.

“There’s a plot at Trinity Cemetery that’s been waiting for a Stage 4.”

Black blood filled ’s syringe and Lynch turned away. “Are you about finished? I need to complete my notes.”

popped the cap closed and put the specimen in his jacket pocket. “Of course. I only need one more thing.” His hands developed a small tremor as he retrieved another vial while Lynch looked over some paperwork. He had no idea how to get Atta out.

Carefully, he used a pair of surgical shears to snip a piece of the mushroom stalk, pulling out a bit of the root—mycelium she’d called it. Storing them in a vial, he hoped it would be all Atta needed. He slipped all the tubes and vials into the interior pocket of his coat and discarded his gloves.

“Is there a back door out of here?” asked, grasping at straws. “I’ve got to take a piss.”

Lynch laughed. “It’s a long way up, in’it?” He pointed to a dark hallway behind where Atta was hidden that had never noticed before. “That way, I think. Should lead up to the groundskeeper shed.”

Now just had to figure out how in the hell he was going to sneak a woman out of a closet. He hadn’t been the type to sneak girls up into his room as a lad, so he had no frame of reference for hiding one and getting her out. Damn, she did make him feel young again, he had to grant her that. He considered for a moment what Atta would do. Probably distract Lynch with some asinine idea, half-cocked.

“Do you smell that?”

Lynch looked up from his notes. “Smell what?”

“Kerosene. The braziers?”

“Oh, fuck.” Lynch tossed his notebook to one of the metal tables and rushed out.

darted for the closet, pulling Atta out by her wrist and hauling her out the back.

When they made it through the tunnel and outside, they were both pulling cool air into their lungs, leaning up against the side of the groundskeeper shed.

And Atta was laughing, aglow in the moonlight, her hair a mess of tangles. He almost took off his mask right then and there.

But he didn’t want to risk being the reason she stopped laughing.

As it turned out, he was, anyway.

* * *

“ No .”

“I went in there with you,” she was shouting at him. “You took me in there, you brooding eejit. I should be there to look into the findings with you!”

Fucking hell she was beautiful when she was angry. But not as beautiful as when she laughed.

shook his thoughts loose. She might not be his student, but she was still a student and he was a professor. And she’d already almost passed out on him twice. He shouldn't have involved her as much as he had. He’d wait for the paper she said she was working on. Her research. Then cut this off, whatever this was. It would have to be enough.

“No,” he said again with more conviction than he felt.

“But—” She was standing in the petrol car park, her indignant face lit by the overhead car light as she tried again to convince him to let her come to Achilles House with him.

“Goodnight, Atta.” He reached across the car. “Pleasant dreams.” And closed the door in her face.

She shouted several unseemly things at him through the window before finally retreating to her car.

He didn’t drive away until she got in and drove off in the direction of Trinity.

It wasn’t until he pulled up the long cobbled drive of his estate and checked his pockets that he realised she’d stolen one of his samples.