Page 8 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
“What? No, wait!” Snatching his phone away before he could make another call, she stared at the empty corridor for a long moment. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Vir
The moment Vir stepped inside Fehim’scar, he sensed a strange, guilty undertone to his friend’s otherwise upbeat demeanor.
Usually, Vir’s heightened sensitivity to people’s ever-changing emotional states proved to be more of a curse than not. A curse that forced him to feel everything they felt, play-by-play, as if those were his own inner workings, inseparable from theirs. From a stranger’s gut-wrenching sorrow to another’s momentary spike of rage and yet another’s anxious, butterflies-on-steroids infatuation that made him light-headed enough to want to barf out his last meal.
Vir felt everything. And often, all at once. It was another reason for him to hate crowds, not that there could ever be any reason for anyone to actually like those. People who did were obviously lying.
On rare occasions, though, occasions like these, his useless oversensitivity did come in handy. Fehim was clearly hiding something.
“You know…” And it didn’t take him long to give it up on his own. “One of the researchers from the program, Dr. Nori Arya… she’s considered a big-shot prodigy in Canada. No wonder she’s Dr. Elaine Arya’s daughter. Yup, the Elaine Arya who came up with all those Phage-based drugs that shook big pharma a few years ago.”
“Okay…?”
“And you’ve met my flat mate, Ryan, right? It turns out she’s also his childhood friend from Calgary.”
“… and why are you telling me all this?”
“She wants to have a quick chat with you. They’re joining us soon.”
“You mean the Canadian prodigy wants to scout me as her lab rat?” Vir shook his head, clicking his seatbelt off. Not in this lifetime. “Did Adi put you up to this as well?”
“You don’t have to agree to anything.” Fehim gripped his forearm before quickly letting go. “Give it five minutes. I won’t ask you to stay longer if you don’t want to.”
The rear doors swung open, and their two guests slid into the back seats with a loud, “Hey!” from Ryan and a softly mumbled, “Hello,” from the woman, Dr. Arya.
Vir shot an acidic glare at Fehim before settling back with a resigned sigh.
Fine.He’d go have a coffee and get out. It wasn’t like they could force him into anything he didn’t want to be a part of. There was nothing the prodigy could tell him that would make him hand himself to her for her sadistic little science experiment.
Ryan was a verbose one, nearly as chatty as Fehim. They yapped non-stop for the entire ten-minute drive. Yet Vir didn’t hear a single word from Dr. Arya. He couldn’t see her face in the rear-view mirror, but there was something curious about her presence. He couldn’t put a finger on what it was exactly. She seemed nervous, but also had an almost liminal sense of calm about her that hadhimeasing further into his seat.
That was odd. Though not as odd as the fact that he could pick all these layers of emotions from her so clearly, each a distinct viscous sheet slipping over the others. Normally he could only sense the outermost ones from strangers, powerful as those were, but never the whole spectrum. And he was glad he didn’t, or he’d end up in a psychiatric ward somewhere, buried under all the heavy garbage humans liked to carry around with them.
By the time they reached the diner, Vir was already queasy and excused himself to withdraw to the restroom first. He hated how quickly he tired these days. And the headaches that followed even a small amount of exertion.
Slamming a hand over the faucet, he waited for the nausea to pass before he made his way to the ordering queue outside.
“I’ll have a double-shot latte,” he said to the cashier.
“No tacos?” Fehim asked.
Vir shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”
They reached the booth, and he placed his and Dr. Arya’s coffees at the table before taking his seat across from her. Then braced himself for the mind-numbing sales pitch to begin, and with an inaudible sigh, finally glanced at the woman staring doe-eyed at him.
As their eyes met, he froze, his jaw clamping shut against the flurry of expletives before it could slip out. None meant for her, but all directed at the fact that he might have truly, finally started hallucinating. Unless it was a dream. An obnoxiously elaborate one, because there was no way. It couldn’t be.
Dr. Nori Arya… It washer.
Two
The Canadian Prodigy
November 2018:
National University of Science, New Delhi
