fic: this is how an angel dies I
Title: this is how an angel dies
Pairing: Quinn/Santana
Rating: R
Length: 3600
Spoilers: 4x08
Summary: A gift for the Quinntana fic exchange Prompt: Quinntana in a zombie apocalypse
June 30, 2015
These past few days have been very eventful. Visiting an old classmate from my time at Oxford devolved into us behaving like rowdy undergraduates. Nearly a week was spent carousing and drinking like much younger men. Tonight, my final night in the country, he took me to London’s newest steakhouse and personally ensured that I consumed the better part of a cow. Leaving my packing until the last moment was probably not the wisest idea. I have a car to take me to Heathrow in about seven hours and I seem to have misplaced my passport. If I miss this flight, I’m sure I'll never hear the end of it.
-From the personal journal of Dr. Lee Phillips, Ph.D.
____
Quinn sets down her pen and flexes her fingers. For some reason she decided to take all of her lab notes by hand and now regrets it. Sometimes she almost regrets taking this job period. It’s not that it’s boring; it just isn’t as exciting as she expected. When Dr. Phillips approached her to come for this project, he promised groundbreaking research to finally come up with an antiprotozoal agent to combat the dreade Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite that kills upwards of 80,000 people per year. Eager to make a difference, Quinn enthusiastically signed on but several months later she admits it just isn’t what she expected. She’s sure someone is doing groundbreaking research. It just isn’t her. Instead, Quinn washes beakers and mixes solvents and has recently upgraded to taking care of the lemurs the lab keeps as test subjects. They were cute at first but grew consistently less adorable the more she has to clean up their droppings. It’s also depressing knowing that they’re likely going to die. She really wishes they hadn’t been named.
It's not that Quinn doesn’t enjoy her job. In campaigning for the only undergraduate position on the research team, she exhibited a persistence bordering on obsession. But she hasn't been low man on the totem pole in a while. As a freshman at both Yale and McKinley she easily took control and got out of ever really "paying her dues." It turns out though; a well-placed glare will only accomplish so much when you're the only one in the room without at least a master’s degree. At least they don't send her out for coffee anymore.
Looking at the clock, Quinn realizes that she's stayed much later than she was supposed to. She needs to get home and finish the work for her actual degree; a senior thesis on prion and neurodegenerative diseases. Sure, Dr. Phillips is her advisor and knows just how many hours she works in his lab but there's no way he'll cut her any slack. Just last week, he’d kicked someone out for turning in an assignment at 12:01 rather than 11:59. That unfortunate student has to either find another advisor in the middle of the semester or complete his thesis next fall. It was a terrible thing to watch. Quinn likes to think she wouldn't have burst into tears, but she understands his pain.
It takes less than twenty minutes to trek back to her campus apartment. (Off campus housing in New Haven isn't something her mother is willing to permit) Quinn drops her bags in her room and sticks her head into the common area to offer a perfunctory greeting to her roommate. (The cost for a single dorm isn't something her father is willing to subsidize)
Before getting to work, she checks the few social media sites she remembers the passwords to. It’s just a bunch of information about classmates she doesn't really know or care about and "real" friends she hasn't seen in years. She doesn't know how she got so out of touch but after that first year, she went back to Lima less and less. Sophomore year, Judy saved enough money to spend the holidays in Connecticut. She was so excited to come to Yale that Quinn just nodded and made the arrangements. That summer was the first she filled with summer classes and internships. Judy continues visiting, never ceasing to be impressed with the architecture on campus or "that nice boy" Quinn brought to brunch. Quinn doesn't have the heart to tell her it’s actually a different boy each time, they’re just all kind of interchangeable. She just smooths it over when her mother confuses them by embracing them like old friends.
Satisfied that she's caught up with who'd slept with whom over Fall Break, she closes out of the Internet and gets to work. She types until her roommate barges in and begs her to come to the campus bar.Knowing she’s going to have to deal with a drunken roommate tonight one way or another, Quinn changes into jeans, curls her hair and lets herself be pulled along.
The next morning, Quinn does not have a hangover; she's just tired. She absolutely intended to drink that last shot and it isn't an accident that she slept on the rug in her bedroom. It's plush and comfortable. What she doesn't intend for is to wake up with only twenty minutes until her thesis meeting. Hurriedly changing her shirt and rinsing her mouth, she flies out of the apartment, yanking her hair into a ponytail as she sprints down the stairs. Making it to the office with two minutes to spare, Quinn wipes her forehead and takes several calming breaths. She’s a far cry from the well-collected woman usually seen frequenting the department. Luckily, Dr. Phillips is the epitome of an absent-minded professor, she could show up naked and he'd be unlikely to notice.
Knocking briefly on the door before pushing it open, Quinn slides into the spacious office. It's the second largest in the department and attests to the fact Dr. Phillips would be department head of he weren't so focused on his research.
"Dr. Phillips? Sorry, I'm late. It was a rough morning.”
He’s sitting at his desk staring straight ahead, hands clasping the arms of his chair. Quinn steps closer, taking in his clouded eyes and the bluish tint of his skin. Her advisor looks like she feels.
"Are you feeling well, sir?"
It's as if someone switches on a light or a puppeteer yanks the strings. Dr. Phillips' head snaps in her direction. He isn't looking at her per se but Quinn guesses she has his attention. Something’s off with him and she hopes it means he won't spend the hour grilling her on the more intricate parts of her research. She just wants to eat something and go to sleep.
"Sit down, Quinn"
She sits.
"I've been reviewing your work and I've found," he trails off looking at the file in his hands. "It is exceptional. You may be one of the brightest students I've ever taught. This paper is brilliant and I can confidently say that I wouldn't change a thing."
Quinn feels her mouth drop open. Not once in the entire time she's known him has Dr. Phillips given such lavish praise to anyone. One of his older students was awarded the prestigious Ellsworth Memorial Prize and he'd merely said, "Well done." His own son had been accepted to Cal Tech on a full scholarship and she'd heard him on the phone when he'd said, "that'll do". Now she knows something is up, but it’s not like she can question him for complimenting her. She nods her head and thanks him, just wanting to get this bizarre encounter over with. She has a date with an IHOP.
They talk for another 47 minutes and 15 seconds exactly, ending the meeting promptly after one hour. This also strikes Quinn as odd since Dr. Phillips tends to both ramble and exhibit a complete and utter disregard for keeping time if it’s unrelated to deadlines for student submissions. Still, she’s too eager to leave to really question it. His window faces out into the courtyard and while usually a nice view, the early afternoon sun is coming in at an angle specifically designed to make her blind. Her head aches from squinting and talking and thinking
She’s at the door when he calls out, his voice, urgent and ragged.
“Quinn.” She expects to be reprimanded for something but once again he looks straight through her before shaking his head. He’s sweating now and she’s partially concerned that he’s going senile. That would not work well when she asks him for a grad school recommendation.
She's standing awkwardly in the doorway waiting for him to speak, but he doesn't say anything. “Yes, sir?” she prompts
He’s turned to the window and when he looks back, he seems shocked to see her.
“Quinn, why are you still here?”
She gapes at him Really? She doesn’t have time for this today.
___
There is enough time to head back home and shower before she needs to head into the lab. Her hours are long on the days she works, but that gives her most of the week off. Today is pretty light. On Thursdays, she conducts checkups on all the test subjects. Which really just amounts to weighing them and then playing with them for a few hours. Today however, something is off. The lemurs are generally agreeable, especially with each other since they’ve been raised together since birth. A handful is even from the same litter. There’s always some level of posturing and aggressiveness from a few of the larger males but this is pure chaos. A gang of about four has cornered another and is essentially beating it to death. Others just sit there glassy eyed and unmoving. All are showing the kind of jerky movements that is at odds with the natural grace of the species.
Someone has gone very wrong with the last experiment. Quinn immediately leaves to notify Dr. Phillips, but instead runs into Mark, an older post-doc working at the lab in the hopes of earning a permanent position with the university. He arrived about a half an hour earlier and can’t reach the doctor, but he suspects the lemurs’ erratic behavior is a result of a new version of the vaccine prototype administered ahead of schedule. Nothing is in the lab records, but the access panel logged Dr. Phillips accessing both the holding cages and the supply room the previous evening so it’s was the best explanation.
“Do you think he just forgot to tell us?” Quinn asks. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“Maybe. He’s been a bit off lately don’t you think?”
Quinn shrugs. She does think so, but it isn’t really her place to criticize her superior’s superior.
“There isn’t much you can do right now.” Mark pulls a few bills from his wallet. “Can you just go grab lunch while I try to get them to calm down?”
Quinn comes back with several orders of Chinese. Mark always wants Chinese. The office is pretty quiet and the bags are heavy so she sets them down on the conference room table and goes to look for her coworkers. She can hear Mark’s voice. It’s raised and aggressive, but she can’t tell who’s with him. She cracks the door open and sees the Dr. Phillips facing away from her. Due to the odd angle of the room layout, they can’t really see her. From what she can hear, Mark is furious, but Dr. Phillips isn’t really paying attention.
“This is illegal. The project could lose funding; the lab itself could be closed down.”
“I…know. There just wasn’t time.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to report this you know.”
“No.” That one syllable, in Dr. Phillips gravelly voice is chilling.
"I have to. We’re breaking about five different HIPAA regulations."
"No."
There’s a scuffle and Mark screams. Pushing open the door, she sees Dr. Phillips with his hands around Mark’s neck. Mark is scratching and kicking but he’s never been the most athletic of guys and it’s pretty useless. Quinn is frozen in shock and doesn’t snap out of it until Dr. Phillips clamps his teeth around the forearm Mark is using to push him away. The spurt of blood is what drives her into action. She jumps on his back raking her nails down the sides of his face and neck. He barely flinches before swiping his arm back and knocking her into his desk. Quinn searches for some kind of weapon and sees only the gilt edged letter opener Dr. Phillips got as a gift when he got tenured. Mark’s face is turning a little pale and he’s stopped struggling and she has maybe seconds to do something, so she plunges the letter opener deep into Dr. Phillips’ shoulder. Like her previous attack, it doesn’t seem to faze him.
“Quinn.” Mark chokes out. “You can’t fight him, get the police”
She gets out of the building and calls 911. Yale campus police are on the scene in about ninety seconds and the actual police show up not much later. Crime is taken pretty seriously on campus; she knows the response time in New Haven proper would have been much longer. Never before has she been so grateful for such outright privilege disparity. She gives her statement to the police once at the scene and twice more down at the station. It’s late when the detective in charge informs her that not only did they not find Mark or Dr. Phillips, but also there’s no evidence of any attack. The real blow comes when he starts lecturing her on practical jokes and the possible charges she could face.
“I don’t understand. Mark should be there. He was bleeding everywhere.”
“The lab was so immaculate that you could eat off the floor.”
“But,” she starts not sure who thought this line of questioning would be funny, “I saw -“
“Look, Ms. Fabray. We know how it is. We looked at your record. Sub-matriculating into the neuroscience program at one of the toughest universities in the country and doing it largely on scholarships and financial aid. Sometimes the stress gets to you. We’ve seen kids with a lot less on their plate think up much wilder stories.”
“You think I would make something like this up?”
“What I can tell you. Is that there was no evidence of anything out the usual and that we finally got in touch with Mark Lucas thirty minutes ago and he said he left early because he was coming down with a bug. This was at 4 pm.”
That wasn’t possible. Quinn recorded the anomalies with the test subjects at 3:45. Mark had definitely been struggling against a chokehold about an hour after that. Quinn wondered in the past whether she was going insane but that was largely based on having feelings she knew she shouldn’t, like her sometimes intense desire to light Puck’s mohawk on fire. Never before has she seen something that’s literally not there. Sure, she’s under a lot of pressure with graduation approaching but this is ridiculous.
“I need to speak to Mark. ” she’s sure if there is an explanation for this he’ll have it.
“Quinn. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. If you have any more concern’s. Here’s my card.”
She knows when she’s being told to sit down and shut up, even when it’s done politely. So she does what a good girl like Quinn Fabray would do. She sits down and shuts up and nods gratefully when the detective announces she’ll be let off with just a verbal warning. Then she immediately catches a cab back to campus. She’s not going to believe she made that up until she confirms it with her own eyes. Quinn rolls her eyes at the irony.
She doesn’t know what she’s expecting to find when she swipes into the lab, but Mark sitting alone at his workstation isn’t one of them. He looks like he’s reading something on a monitor but when she gets closer she sees that the screen is blank. She taps him on the shoulder thinking he might be in shock from what happened earlier. He doesn’t move. Beads of sweat have gathered on the back of his neck and when she lightly touches his arm, he’s burning up. She’s bringing her hand back to wipe it on her jeans when he grabs her. He struggles to speak, to connect the words. He turns fully towards her and half his face is gone. A large patch of skin running from his cheekbone to his jaw is partially severed and is hanging awkwardly against his neck. The bite Quinn saw him receive less than five hours ago has turned a sickly color and is still dripping a thin line of blood down to his wrist. In her fright she stumbles backwards but his grip is strong.
“What what’s going on? What happened to you?”
“Quinn. Phillips…messed up.”
“Relax. I’ll call an ambulance. Everything will be fine.”
“No. Take this and go. Far.”
Quinn shakes her head. She left him once and he’d gotten his face ripped off.
Mark squeezes her wrist so hard she thinks she hears something crack. “He’ll be back. There’s… “ He can’t focus long enough to finish a sentence but she can’t break out of his hold so she just tries to follow along.
“Who? Dr. Phillips? I’ll call the cops.”
“Shut up, Quinn. Go. Manhattan.”
His voice wavers a bit and a gurgling in his throat results in a fair about of blood trickling out of his mouth. He presses something into her pocket before he drags her to the door and shoves her out. Over his shoulder, a dark figure approaches. The shuffling steps echo along the tiles. Mark, looking more lucid than he has in the last ten minutes, tenses up and closes the door in her face. He bolts it and frantically gestures for her to go. She sees the pistol in his good hand just as he turns around. She’s halfway to the stairwell when she hears three rounds fired in quick succession.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a vial of blood. Scrawled on a bloody scrap of paper is a place and a name Dr. S Ahmed. Manhattan.
Quinn makes it back to her room in record time. Everything is in its place; her bed neatly made, books meticulously organized. It looks right. But nothing is right the moment. Quinn can’t stay here. Glancing around the room to keep from crying, an action that once started might never stop, her eyes light on the only thing besides class reminders pinned to her corkboard. It’s her current Metro-North pass pinned under a series of Metro-North passes starting with the one she bought in the spring of 2012. None of them have ever been used, but buying them made her felt like she was at least trying so she’d gotten into the habit. Once Kurt and Santana joined Rachel in New York, she’d felt like less of an awful friend knowing she could visit them. The passes steadily turned into a symbol of all of her good intentions. Now, they’re a plan and something to focus on. Quinn can do plans.
There’s surely a reason why she finds herself on Santana’s doorstep and not Rachel’s, but Quinn doesn’t know what it is. According to Google Maps, Rachel’s apartment is easier to get to from Grand Central and Rachel is 100 percent more likely to believe her story and help her find whomever this Dr. Ahmed is. But when Brittany finally texts her the address after several circuitous riddles to prove that she is in fact, Quinn Fabray, that’s where she goes. She’s done a lot of waiting in doorways today and none of those times has ended particularly well, so she doesn’t know why she expects this to be different. Sneaking past the outer door when a drunk resident stumbles back in, she raps firmly on Santana’s door and hopes someone is home. There’s shuffling on the other side. The door opens and she sees Santana for the first time in over two years. The sweats and the glasses indicate that this is a night in, as does the TV blaring in the background. There isn’t a chance to indulge in curiosity because Santana hasn’t said a word and there usually isn’t ever a time when Santana doesn’t have a few choice words, especially for her.
“Fabray.” Her voice is sleepy but other than that completely detached.
“Hi, Santana”
The look Santana gives her is worse than any glare. Her face pulls into a kind of half frown, half squint before it smooths out to become just as emotionless as her voice.
“Fuck. Off.”
The door slams in her face and somehow Santana being a bitch is the most comforting part of her day.
Pairing: Quinn/Santana
Rating: R
Length: 3600
Spoilers: 4x08
Summary: A gift for the Quinntana fic exchange Prompt: Quinntana in a zombie apocalypse
June 30, 2015
These past few days have been very eventful. Visiting an old classmate from my time at Oxford devolved into us behaving like rowdy undergraduates. Nearly a week was spent carousing and drinking like much younger men. Tonight, my final night in the country, he took me to London’s newest steakhouse and personally ensured that I consumed the better part of a cow. Leaving my packing until the last moment was probably not the wisest idea. I have a car to take me to Heathrow in about seven hours and I seem to have misplaced my passport. If I miss this flight, I’m sure I'll never hear the end of it.
-From the personal journal of Dr. Lee Phillips, Ph.D.
____
Quinn sets down her pen and flexes her fingers. For some reason she decided to take all of her lab notes by hand and now regrets it. Sometimes she almost regrets taking this job period. It’s not that it’s boring; it just isn’t as exciting as she expected. When Dr. Phillips approached her to come for this project, he promised groundbreaking research to finally come up with an antiprotozoal agent to combat the dreade Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite that kills upwards of 80,000 people per year. Eager to make a difference, Quinn enthusiastically signed on but several months later she admits it just isn’t what she expected. She’s sure someone is doing groundbreaking research. It just isn’t her. Instead, Quinn washes beakers and mixes solvents and has recently upgraded to taking care of the lemurs the lab keeps as test subjects. They were cute at first but grew consistently less adorable the more she has to clean up their droppings. It’s also depressing knowing that they’re likely going to die. She really wishes they hadn’t been named.
It's not that Quinn doesn’t enjoy her job. In campaigning for the only undergraduate position on the research team, she exhibited a persistence bordering on obsession. But she hasn't been low man on the totem pole in a while. As a freshman at both Yale and McKinley she easily took control and got out of ever really "paying her dues." It turns out though; a well-placed glare will only accomplish so much when you're the only one in the room without at least a master’s degree. At least they don't send her out for coffee anymore.
Looking at the clock, Quinn realizes that she's stayed much later than she was supposed to. She needs to get home and finish the work for her actual degree; a senior thesis on prion and neurodegenerative diseases. Sure, Dr. Phillips is her advisor and knows just how many hours she works in his lab but there's no way he'll cut her any slack. Just last week, he’d kicked someone out for turning in an assignment at 12:01 rather than 11:59. That unfortunate student has to either find another advisor in the middle of the semester or complete his thesis next fall. It was a terrible thing to watch. Quinn likes to think she wouldn't have burst into tears, but she understands his pain.
It takes less than twenty minutes to trek back to her campus apartment. (Off campus housing in New Haven isn't something her mother is willing to permit) Quinn drops her bags in her room and sticks her head into the common area to offer a perfunctory greeting to her roommate. (The cost for a single dorm isn't something her father is willing to subsidize)
Before getting to work, she checks the few social media sites she remembers the passwords to. It’s just a bunch of information about classmates she doesn't really know or care about and "real" friends she hasn't seen in years. She doesn't know how she got so out of touch but after that first year, she went back to Lima less and less. Sophomore year, Judy saved enough money to spend the holidays in Connecticut. She was so excited to come to Yale that Quinn just nodded and made the arrangements. That summer was the first she filled with summer classes and internships. Judy continues visiting, never ceasing to be impressed with the architecture on campus or "that nice boy" Quinn brought to brunch. Quinn doesn't have the heart to tell her it’s actually a different boy each time, they’re just all kind of interchangeable. She just smooths it over when her mother confuses them by embracing them like old friends.
Satisfied that she's caught up with who'd slept with whom over Fall Break, she closes out of the Internet and gets to work. She types until her roommate barges in and begs her to come to the campus bar.Knowing she’s going to have to deal with a drunken roommate tonight one way or another, Quinn changes into jeans, curls her hair and lets herself be pulled along.
The next morning, Quinn does not have a hangover; she's just tired. She absolutely intended to drink that last shot and it isn't an accident that she slept on the rug in her bedroom. It's plush and comfortable. What she doesn't intend for is to wake up with only twenty minutes until her thesis meeting. Hurriedly changing her shirt and rinsing her mouth, she flies out of the apartment, yanking her hair into a ponytail as she sprints down the stairs. Making it to the office with two minutes to spare, Quinn wipes her forehead and takes several calming breaths. She’s a far cry from the well-collected woman usually seen frequenting the department. Luckily, Dr. Phillips is the epitome of an absent-minded professor, she could show up naked and he'd be unlikely to notice.
Knocking briefly on the door before pushing it open, Quinn slides into the spacious office. It's the second largest in the department and attests to the fact Dr. Phillips would be department head of he weren't so focused on his research.
"Dr. Phillips? Sorry, I'm late. It was a rough morning.”
He’s sitting at his desk staring straight ahead, hands clasping the arms of his chair. Quinn steps closer, taking in his clouded eyes and the bluish tint of his skin. Her advisor looks like she feels.
"Are you feeling well, sir?"
It's as if someone switches on a light or a puppeteer yanks the strings. Dr. Phillips' head snaps in her direction. He isn't looking at her per se but Quinn guesses she has his attention. Something’s off with him and she hopes it means he won't spend the hour grilling her on the more intricate parts of her research. She just wants to eat something and go to sleep.
"Sit down, Quinn"
She sits.
"I've been reviewing your work and I've found," he trails off looking at the file in his hands. "It is exceptional. You may be one of the brightest students I've ever taught. This paper is brilliant and I can confidently say that I wouldn't change a thing."
Quinn feels her mouth drop open. Not once in the entire time she's known him has Dr. Phillips given such lavish praise to anyone. One of his older students was awarded the prestigious Ellsworth Memorial Prize and he'd merely said, "Well done." His own son had been accepted to Cal Tech on a full scholarship and she'd heard him on the phone when he'd said, "that'll do". Now she knows something is up, but it’s not like she can question him for complimenting her. She nods her head and thanks him, just wanting to get this bizarre encounter over with. She has a date with an IHOP.
They talk for another 47 minutes and 15 seconds exactly, ending the meeting promptly after one hour. This also strikes Quinn as odd since Dr. Phillips tends to both ramble and exhibit a complete and utter disregard for keeping time if it’s unrelated to deadlines for student submissions. Still, she’s too eager to leave to really question it. His window faces out into the courtyard and while usually a nice view, the early afternoon sun is coming in at an angle specifically designed to make her blind. Her head aches from squinting and talking and thinking
She’s at the door when he calls out, his voice, urgent and ragged.
“Quinn.” She expects to be reprimanded for something but once again he looks straight through her before shaking his head. He’s sweating now and she’s partially concerned that he’s going senile. That would not work well when she asks him for a grad school recommendation.
She's standing awkwardly in the doorway waiting for him to speak, but he doesn't say anything. “Yes, sir?” she prompts
He’s turned to the window and when he looks back, he seems shocked to see her.
“Quinn, why are you still here?”
She gapes at him Really? She doesn’t have time for this today.
___
There is enough time to head back home and shower before she needs to head into the lab. Her hours are long on the days she works, but that gives her most of the week off. Today is pretty light. On Thursdays, she conducts checkups on all the test subjects. Which really just amounts to weighing them and then playing with them for a few hours. Today however, something is off. The lemurs are generally agreeable, especially with each other since they’ve been raised together since birth. A handful is even from the same litter. There’s always some level of posturing and aggressiveness from a few of the larger males but this is pure chaos. A gang of about four has cornered another and is essentially beating it to death. Others just sit there glassy eyed and unmoving. All are showing the kind of jerky movements that is at odds with the natural grace of the species.
Someone has gone very wrong with the last experiment. Quinn immediately leaves to notify Dr. Phillips, but instead runs into Mark, an older post-doc working at the lab in the hopes of earning a permanent position with the university. He arrived about a half an hour earlier and can’t reach the doctor, but he suspects the lemurs’ erratic behavior is a result of a new version of the vaccine prototype administered ahead of schedule. Nothing is in the lab records, but the access panel logged Dr. Phillips accessing both the holding cages and the supply room the previous evening so it’s was the best explanation.
“Do you think he just forgot to tell us?” Quinn asks. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“Maybe. He’s been a bit off lately don’t you think?”
Quinn shrugs. She does think so, but it isn’t really her place to criticize her superior’s superior.
“There isn’t much you can do right now.” Mark pulls a few bills from his wallet. “Can you just go grab lunch while I try to get them to calm down?”
Quinn comes back with several orders of Chinese. Mark always wants Chinese. The office is pretty quiet and the bags are heavy so she sets them down on the conference room table and goes to look for her coworkers. She can hear Mark’s voice. It’s raised and aggressive, but she can’t tell who’s with him. She cracks the door open and sees the Dr. Phillips facing away from her. Due to the odd angle of the room layout, they can’t really see her. From what she can hear, Mark is furious, but Dr. Phillips isn’t really paying attention.
“This is illegal. The project could lose funding; the lab itself could be closed down.”
“I…know. There just wasn’t time.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to report this you know.”
“No.” That one syllable, in Dr. Phillips gravelly voice is chilling.
"I have to. We’re breaking about five different HIPAA regulations."
"No."
There’s a scuffle and Mark screams. Pushing open the door, she sees Dr. Phillips with his hands around Mark’s neck. Mark is scratching and kicking but he’s never been the most athletic of guys and it’s pretty useless. Quinn is frozen in shock and doesn’t snap out of it until Dr. Phillips clamps his teeth around the forearm Mark is using to push him away. The spurt of blood is what drives her into action. She jumps on his back raking her nails down the sides of his face and neck. He barely flinches before swiping his arm back and knocking her into his desk. Quinn searches for some kind of weapon and sees only the gilt edged letter opener Dr. Phillips got as a gift when he got tenured. Mark’s face is turning a little pale and he’s stopped struggling and she has maybe seconds to do something, so she plunges the letter opener deep into Dr. Phillips’ shoulder. Like her previous attack, it doesn’t seem to faze him.
“Quinn.” Mark chokes out. “You can’t fight him, get the police”
She gets out of the building and calls 911. Yale campus police are on the scene in about ninety seconds and the actual police show up not much later. Crime is taken pretty seriously on campus; she knows the response time in New Haven proper would have been much longer. Never before has she been so grateful for such outright privilege disparity. She gives her statement to the police once at the scene and twice more down at the station. It’s late when the detective in charge informs her that not only did they not find Mark or Dr. Phillips, but also there’s no evidence of any attack. The real blow comes when he starts lecturing her on practical jokes and the possible charges she could face.
“I don’t understand. Mark should be there. He was bleeding everywhere.”
“The lab was so immaculate that you could eat off the floor.”
“But,” she starts not sure who thought this line of questioning would be funny, “I saw -“
“Look, Ms. Fabray. We know how it is. We looked at your record. Sub-matriculating into the neuroscience program at one of the toughest universities in the country and doing it largely on scholarships and financial aid. Sometimes the stress gets to you. We’ve seen kids with a lot less on their plate think up much wilder stories.”
“You think I would make something like this up?”
“What I can tell you. Is that there was no evidence of anything out the usual and that we finally got in touch with Mark Lucas thirty minutes ago and he said he left early because he was coming down with a bug. This was at 4 pm.”
That wasn’t possible. Quinn recorded the anomalies with the test subjects at 3:45. Mark had definitely been struggling against a chokehold about an hour after that. Quinn wondered in the past whether she was going insane but that was largely based on having feelings she knew she shouldn’t, like her sometimes intense desire to light Puck’s mohawk on fire. Never before has she seen something that’s literally not there. Sure, she’s under a lot of pressure with graduation approaching but this is ridiculous.
“I need to speak to Mark. ” she’s sure if there is an explanation for this he’ll have it.
“Quinn. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. If you have any more concern’s. Here’s my card.”
She knows when she’s being told to sit down and shut up, even when it’s done politely. So she does what a good girl like Quinn Fabray would do. She sits down and shuts up and nods gratefully when the detective announces she’ll be let off with just a verbal warning. Then she immediately catches a cab back to campus. She’s not going to believe she made that up until she confirms it with her own eyes. Quinn rolls her eyes at the irony.
She doesn’t know what she’s expecting to find when she swipes into the lab, but Mark sitting alone at his workstation isn’t one of them. He looks like he’s reading something on a monitor but when she gets closer she sees that the screen is blank. She taps him on the shoulder thinking he might be in shock from what happened earlier. He doesn’t move. Beads of sweat have gathered on the back of his neck and when she lightly touches his arm, he’s burning up. She’s bringing her hand back to wipe it on her jeans when he grabs her. He struggles to speak, to connect the words. He turns fully towards her and half his face is gone. A large patch of skin running from his cheekbone to his jaw is partially severed and is hanging awkwardly against his neck. The bite Quinn saw him receive less than five hours ago has turned a sickly color and is still dripping a thin line of blood down to his wrist. In her fright she stumbles backwards but his grip is strong.
“What what’s going on? What happened to you?”
“Quinn. Phillips…messed up.”
“Relax. I’ll call an ambulance. Everything will be fine.”
“No. Take this and go. Far.”
Quinn shakes her head. She left him once and he’d gotten his face ripped off.
Mark squeezes her wrist so hard she thinks she hears something crack. “He’ll be back. There’s… “ He can’t focus long enough to finish a sentence but she can’t break out of his hold so she just tries to follow along.
“Who? Dr. Phillips? I’ll call the cops.”
“Shut up, Quinn. Go. Manhattan.”
His voice wavers a bit and a gurgling in his throat results in a fair about of blood trickling out of his mouth. He presses something into her pocket before he drags her to the door and shoves her out. Over his shoulder, a dark figure approaches. The shuffling steps echo along the tiles. Mark, looking more lucid than he has in the last ten minutes, tenses up and closes the door in her face. He bolts it and frantically gestures for her to go. She sees the pistol in his good hand just as he turns around. She’s halfway to the stairwell when she hears three rounds fired in quick succession.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a vial of blood. Scrawled on a bloody scrap of paper is a place and a name Dr. S Ahmed. Manhattan.
Quinn makes it back to her room in record time. Everything is in its place; her bed neatly made, books meticulously organized. It looks right. But nothing is right the moment. Quinn can’t stay here. Glancing around the room to keep from crying, an action that once started might never stop, her eyes light on the only thing besides class reminders pinned to her corkboard. It’s her current Metro-North pass pinned under a series of Metro-North passes starting with the one she bought in the spring of 2012. None of them have ever been used, but buying them made her felt like she was at least trying so she’d gotten into the habit. Once Kurt and Santana joined Rachel in New York, she’d felt like less of an awful friend knowing she could visit them. The passes steadily turned into a symbol of all of her good intentions. Now, they’re a plan and something to focus on. Quinn can do plans.
There’s surely a reason why she finds herself on Santana’s doorstep and not Rachel’s, but Quinn doesn’t know what it is. According to Google Maps, Rachel’s apartment is easier to get to from Grand Central and Rachel is 100 percent more likely to believe her story and help her find whomever this Dr. Ahmed is. But when Brittany finally texts her the address after several circuitous riddles to prove that she is in fact, Quinn Fabray, that’s where she goes. She’s done a lot of waiting in doorways today and none of those times has ended particularly well, so she doesn’t know why she expects this to be different. Sneaking past the outer door when a drunk resident stumbles back in, she raps firmly on Santana’s door and hopes someone is home. There’s shuffling on the other side. The door opens and she sees Santana for the first time in over two years. The sweats and the glasses indicate that this is a night in, as does the TV blaring in the background. There isn’t a chance to indulge in curiosity because Santana hasn’t said a word and there usually isn’t ever a time when Santana doesn’t have a few choice words, especially for her.
“Fabray.” Her voice is sleepy but other than that completely detached.
“Hi, Santana”
The look Santana gives her is worse than any glare. Her face pulls into a kind of half frown, half squint before it smooths out to become just as emotionless as her voice.
“Fuck. Off.”
The door slams in her face and somehow Santana being a bitch is the most comforting part of her day.