The vial shattered and the liquid turned to fire on her skin. Miku didn't scream. She bit down so hard her jaw ached and watched the compound eat through her glove like it was nothing, then through the flesh beneath. The smell hit her next—acrid chemicals and something worse, something that reminded her of burnt sugar left too long on the stove. "No, no, no, no—" She grabbed for the emergency neutralizer with her good hand, knocked over a rack of test tubes, and heard them shatter somewhere to her left. The pain was starting to catch up now, crawling up her arm in waves, and she couldn't get the damn bottle open. Her fingers were shaking. Her whole body was shaking. The neutralizer hissed when she finally dumped it over the wound. It helped. A little. Enough that she could look down and see what she'd done to herself. Her glove was gone, dissolved into blackened scraps clinging to raw, weeping skin. The burn ran from her wrist to just below her elbow, angry and red and already blistering in places. Blood dripped from a cut on her palm—she must have grabbed a shard of glass without noticing—and mixed with the chemical residue on the floor. Miku stared at her arm. Then at the mess on the counter. Then at the notebook lying open, the formula she'd been so confident about scrawled across two pages in her own handwriting. "Stupid," she whispered. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." She'd been so sure. The calculations were perfect. The ratios were right. She'd checked them seven times before mixing the first batch. And still— The lab door slammed open. Miku looked up and found Teto standing in the doorway, red hair wild, white gloves stark against the dark fabric of her suit. Her eyes went wide, then narrow, then wide again. "What the hell—Miku!" Teto crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed Miku's injured arm before Miku could pull away. Her touch was surprisingly gentle for someone whose face was rapidly turning the color of her tie. "Let me see. How bad is it? What did you do?" "I'm fine." "You're bleeding on the floor. You're burned. There's glass everywhere. You are not fine." Miku tried to pull her arm back. Teto held on. The movement sent a fresh spike of pain up to her shoulder and Miku hissed through her teeth. "I said I'm fine." "And I said you're not." Teto's voice cracked on the last word. She was scared. Miku could hear it now, underneath the anger. "We need to get you to the infirmary. Now." "I can't." "What do you mean you can't?" Miku looked past Teto, at the chaos on her workbench, at the notebook with its ruined formula, at the trail of blood she was leaving on the tile. The board would see this. They'd review the security footage, read the incident report, and they'd know. They'd know she'd been wrong. "The experiment," Miku said. "I need to—I have to figure out what went wrong. Before anyone else sees this." "Forget the experiment. You're hurt." "You don't understand." Miku's voice came out thin and sharp. "The board has been waiting for me to fail. They think I'm too young, too reckless, too—" She gestured with her good hand at the disaster around them. "This. They'll use this." Teto's grip on her arm softened. "Let them try. I'll burn the whole building down before I let them touch you." "That's not the point." "Then what is?" Miku opened her mouth to answer, but the words didn't come. Because the point was that she should have been better. She should have been perfect. And she wasn't. The silence stretched. Teto's jaw worked, like she was chewing on something she wanted to say and trying to decide whether to spit it out. "Okay," Teto said finally. "Okay. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to patch you up as best I can, right here, because I know you won't leave. Then you're going to tell me what went wrong, and we're going to fix it together. And then—" She paused. "Then we're going to have a very long conversation about you not being so hard on yourself." Miku blinked. "You don't know how to patch someone up." "I've watched medical dramas." "That's not the same thing." "It's better than nothing." Teto was already looking around the lab, probably searching for the first-aid kit. "Where do you keep the bandages?" Miku pointed weakly toward the cabinet by the door. Teto let go of her arm and crossed to it, pulling it open with more force than necessary. The contents rattled. "I messed up," Miku said, more to herself than to Teto. "I really messed up this time." Teto turned back, a roll of gauze in one hand and a tube of burn cream in the other. Her expression was softer now, the anger faded to something that looked a lot like worry. "You messed up an experiment. That's what labs are for. You learn, you try again, you get it right." "And if I don't?" Teto walked back to her, dropped to her knees on the bloody floor, and started uncapping the burn cream. "Then you try again. And again. And again. Until you get it right or until you decide it's not worth it anymore. And I'll be here for all of it." Miku watched Teto's careful hands as she spread the cream over the burn. It was cold at first, then warm, then numb. The pain receded to a dull ache. "I don't deserve you," Miku said quietly. "No," Teto agreed, and there was a hint of a smile in her voice. "You don't. But you've got me anyway." She wound the gauze around Miku's arm, layer after layer, until the wound was hidden. It wasn't neat, and it wouldn't hold for long, but it was something. "There," Teto said, sitting back on her heels. "Now tell me what went wrong." Miku looked at her arm, at the white gauze already spotting red, at the mess on the floor, at the notebook with its perfect, terrible formula. "I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know what went wrong. I checked everything. Seven times. And it still—" A sound from the hallway made them both freeze. Footsteps. Steady. Deliberate. Coming this way. Teto's eyes met hers. "Who else has access to this lab?" "Just me. And the board." They looked at each other. The footsteps kept coming. "Stay here," Teto said, rising to her feet. "Let me handle this." Miku grabbed her wrist with her good hand. "Teto—" "I said let me handle it." But Miku didn't let go. And the footsteps kept coming.

Ch. 1