Chapter 2

At ten o'clock that night, I made my way to sub-basement two of the med school's lab building. The hallway lights flickered. The air reeked of formaldehyde and rotting flesh.

I pushed open the metal door, and a blast of cold air hit me. At the dissection table, a figure in a white coat stood with his back to me, head bent over his work. Under the shadowless lamp, his profile was sharp and clean, and the hand gripping the scalpel was rock steady.

"Get changed, wash your hands, and glove up in doubles," he said, without turning around. His voice was ice cold.

I put on the protective suit and pulled on my gloves before stepping up beside him.

"The sink over there has more than a hundred instruments that were just used, and next to it is the discard table," he said. "You have one hour to scrub them clean and put them back by number." He stepped back half a pace. "If you're squeamish enough to throw up in my lab, you can leave right now."

I walked to the sink. The instruments were caked in dried blood, and my stomach began to churn violently, cold sweat breaking out across my skin.

'I need this job,' I told myself. 'I need this job.'

I scrubbed, wiped, sorted, and shelved. The only sounds in the lab were running water and the clink of metal.

Fifty minutes later, I shut off the faucet and stepped back. Professor Cheshire came over and looked everything over. Not only were the instruments spotless, the forceps were arranged by length and type with spacing so even it looked measured with a ruler.

He looked up, studying me through his goggles. "You seem tense. Is that just nerves, or something physical?"

My chest tightened. "Sorry. I skipped dinner. My blood sugar's a little low."

He stared at my pale face and trembling lips, then let out a cold huff. "I couldn't care less about your personal life. But in my lab, you keep yourself in peak condition."

He nodded toward the break room. "There's glucose tablets and bread on the table. Eat, then come back and finish cleaning."

I gave a small nod and went to the break room. The moment I tore open the wrapper, my eyes stung. It was the first solid food I'd had in three days.

Back at the villa, Rhonda sat glaring at her phone, brows knotted.

"We're sorry, the number you dialed is currently busy..."

Three days straight, she'd called and messaged nonstop, and every single one had gone unanswered.

"That brat actually blocked me!" She hurled the phone onto the couch, furious.

Sean wandered downstairs in his pajamas, a can of sparkling water in hand. "Mom, what's got you so worked up?"

Rhonda arranged her face into something wounded. "It's your sister. I docked her allowance for a few days and she just went dark on me!"

Sean smirked. "Where's she gonna go? Starve her a few days and she'll come crawling back to beg you.

"Oh, and Mom, I burned through that six hundred already. Send me more? Zoe's birthday is this weekend, and I've got my eye on a necklace that's over a thousand."

Rhonda blinked. "That fast? You just took it two days ago."

Sean leaned in and shook her arm, shameless. "You can't date somebody without spending money on them. I'm not gonna look cheap. And didn't you say the whole family fortune's mine eventually anyway? What's the harm in spending a little early?"

Rhonda melted, nodding along. "Fine, fine. I'll send it. Just don't blow through it too fast."

A chime sounded. A thousand dollars landed in his account.

Sean stared at the balance, the corner of his mouth curling into a smug little smile. He had no intention of buying any necklace. He'd lost three thousand betting on sports online and taken out an online loan to cover it. With the interest compounding, it had already ballooned to five thousand.

…

Two weeks later.

I'd fully settled into the lab's rhythm. Every day, between classes, I worked in the sub-basement processing specimens. Professor Cheshire had a temper, but he never held back when it came to teaching.

Even though I was mostly stuck doing grunt work, he sometimes let me hand him instruments during procedures. Through sheer repetition, I could now slap a scalpel into his palm, dead accurate, within half a second of him asking for it. He'd even started letting me stand by and watch his core dissection techniques.

The day I got my first paycheck, three hundred dollars, I went to the cafeteria and ordered a pot roast. The familiar taste of meat melted in my mouth, and I ate it in quiet peace.

But I knew Rhonda wouldn't let this go once she realized I'd truly gone dark on her.