Oliver filed in line behind Douglass and Cassidy as the entire class climbed up onto the bus and sat down with another class from across the hall.

"Is your dad going to be there?" Cassidy asked, nudging him a little with her elbow. He rolled his eyes and pressed himself up against the side of the bus in flagrant effort to ignore her.

"My dad is!" Douglass popped up from behind the seat and leaned over to insert himself into the conversation. "He's presenting his new machine to the board of directors today and said that if it goes well, he can show it to our class too."

"No one cares, Douglass." Oliver huffed quietly. Cassidy smacked his head lightly, and he shot a glare at her, which she returned in kind.

"Just cause you're in a bad mood doesn't mean you can be mean to everyone else!" She started, smiling back at Douglass as a small apology to him.

The three of them settled down as the bus lurched forward and pulled out of the school lot so it could drive a whopping thirty minutes north to the AKAN lab.

He didn't want to go back, really, and hadn't been back since before the accident. It was closed for a few months, to get renovations.

It looked different, sort of, the back left building was entirely new, for reasons. The art piece at the center staircase up to the lab was the same though, and Oliver drew in a quick gasp at it and dropped his gaze back to the pavement.

Cassidy butted him softly with her shoulder, offering a consoling smile.

"You okay?" She asked, slowing her pace to try and veer him further away from the entrance to maybe calm the nerves she figured he had.

"I'm fine."

"Right," She replied almost sarcastically.
He shot another glare at her and fell back into the back of the crowd to avoid her.
He didn't need Cassidy trying to make him feel better about this place. She didn't need to make him feel better about his mom.

Oliver busied himself and his attention by picking at the gauze around his wrist until it started tearing off. Only to pass the sculpture, and the lab entrance, and to ignore the tour guide that spouted science crap.

Something swallowed him up there, and it wasn't the fact that he hadn't been here since before his mom was gone. That bothered him, yeah, but he sort of missed her- Dindet.

It was a weird comfort that he didn't think about often, and didn't think mattered until it was gone. He didn't have to deal with talking about how he felt, or people asking him if he was 'okay'. She just automatically knew when he wasn't, and she didn't really have to say anything.

Chris pulled up into the employee parking and scrambled out of his truck, tearing the bungee chords off of the tarp and folding it aside to reveal his completed project.

He ran up to the back door just as Abadi and Kistle pushed out of it, ready to help him pull the thing onto a dolly.

"I'll need another for the container." Chris mentioned, gesturing at the large glass tube that held an undulating unconcious Dindet inside. Kistle nodded and headed back inside to grab another one and the three of them wheeled the converter into the back entrance of the lab to prepare it for presentation.

"That's the thing you were talking about?" Abadi questioned, struggling to sit the tank upright.

"Yeah- I found most of it monday." Chris answered, hurrying to help the man so it didn't topple over. Abadi gave him a rather incredulous look before taking interest in the thing he found.

"You sure that'll work?" He glanced back at him, but Chris was already piecing together his machine.

"I've been testing it with low currents all week, it works great." Chris waved off his concerns.

"Besides, it's just a trial presentation. Once the directors approve of it, I'll start working on a synthesized conductor to replace it." He continued, fitting the tank up to the electromagnetic plate of the machine and providing a little spit and shine to make it a little more presentable.

"We have the top minds of the country working on projects in all fields of science, but this is our crown beauty." 'The super collider' Oliver mocked the tour guide's excitement and rolled his eyes.
All it did was smash particles together at a ridiculously high velocity. It wasn't even special, but because the thing was so huge and made the whole lab one giant circle, everyone assumed it did something incredibly important.

The tour moved down the hall toward the biology department and Oliver trailed a bit behind the rest of the class, looking around at some of the things that changed. The east wing looked just about the same, aside from new tile. So, he broke off to explore away from the class to go to the wing his mom last was.

Oliver was familiar with the lab to the point that he remembered it perfectly in his nightmares, and there were plenty of places to hide, if he had to. He didn't usually, when his parents were here, but even the janitor recognized him so he probably should have been discrete.

"Erh..ehem." he overheard Douglass's dad clear his throat and folded himself against the wall to avoid their line of sight.

"I just know that when the board sees this thing, they won't hesitate to- Oliver?"

Crap.

Oliver scrunched up his shoulders in anticipation when the man's hand landed on it and pulled him away from the corner.

"Are you here with the school?" He asked, leading him down the hall, likely back toward that boring tour.

"N-no?" Crap. He panicked. Oliver mentally smacked himself in the face and peeked to see if Chris had bought it.

"Oh, Jon came to see my presentation then? That's good!" He grinned, pressing his hand into Oliver's back and directing him left down a corridor that led to the renovated portion of the lab. "I'm sure Douglass's told you about my project, but I didn't think either of you would be ready to come see."

"Right, yeah- your, uh, energy converter?"

"Electromagnetic frequency disruptor but, yeah, it's also an energy converter." The man corrected.

"It's actually quite interesting, I found this strange substance that works perfectly as a conductor- I'm temporarily using it to act as the conduit for my contained Tesla arc and once the presentation is over, I plan on presenting that to the board too. You should really get a look at this." So that's where Douglass got his talkative nature. Oliver let out a reluctant sigh, rolling his eyes until they caught sight of what exactly Chris had found and put inside his machine.

He froze, staring at the floating amorphous black mass in its container as the scientist went ahead of him to excitedly show him what he had made.

Unmistakable. It was so undoubtedly her that it almost physically hurt.

"Uh, Mr. Furkin, I don't think that's a good idea." He took a small step forward, glancing around to see if anyone else might be around.

"It's a brilliant idea!" Chris argued, waving away Oliver's concern and worry. "I'll show you how it works, real quick."

Oliver moved a little closer, catching a glimpse of Dindet's bright white eye that blinked away and his heart dropped to his feet.

"Mr. Furkin-" He stopped himself, momentarily perplexed by a soft ticking noise that grew into a whir and filled the air until a terrible dread boiled up inside him.

For half a second, he saw her come almost completely together and then a large, white arc of lightning shot up from the plate underneath her.

A horrendous screech erupted from Dindet that echoed the one he heard in her nightmare.

Every bit of the alien was contracting- or trying to, but the electricity shot out and darted off the glass back into her spiking, terrified mass.

"TURN IT OFF!!" Oliver screeched through her cries, only for it to fall on deaf ears.

"I KNOW IT'S LOUD BUT LOOK HOW MUCH POWER I'M PRODUCING!" Chris grinned, clapping his hands together before moving the dial up a little. "ALMOST 2.5 GIGGAWATTS AN HOUR, IT'S REMARKABLE!"

Dindet's agonized shrieking grew louder and it made Oliver's ears ring as his eyes flitted around the room. He needed to do something. He needed to stop this. He needed to move!

Oliver bolted to the machine, trying to yank the scientist back but his confusion prevented him from budging at all.

"YOU HAVE TO TURN IT OFF!! YOU'RE KILLING HER!" Oliver cried, pounding his fists against Chris's chest to make him move or do SOMETHING.
Chris stared at the boy, deaf and baffled by his response. He pushed him back from the control switch and accidentally hit the dial far too high, causing the alien to cry out even louder.

"It hurts! It HURTS!! make it stop, MAKE IT STOP!!" a horrific and concussive wail tore out of the alien, and Chris swiveled his head around, suddenly realizing that something was very, very wrong.

Oliver ripped past him, straight to the tank his friend was being tortured inside and desperately banged his fists into the glass as hard as he possibly could.

This was his fault. She was here and it was his fault.

Oliver felt tears burning in his eyes until he could barely see what remained of the alien's mortified face and he pressed his forehead into the glass, frantically searching for some kind of solution to save her.

She was here because of him and the horrible realization almost sucked every last bit of thought out of his aching head until the only thing that remained was a terrible, desperate whisper that pleaded to do something, anything.
Anything at all.

He lifted his head, numbly staring at the small spider web fractures he had made in the glass with his fists and came up with a stupid, last ditch effort.

Oliver crashed his head as hard as he possibly could into the glass, forcing Chris out of his stupor enough to switch off the terrible machine, allowing Dindet to make a frail escape.

The clown creeped through the shattered glass, dripping bits of herself like fresh blood that dried away after only a couple of seconds on the ground.

Oliver frantically tore away more of the shards, and let Dindet fall into him, staining his clothes an inky black as all of her began to float away into nothingness.

"No..no, no, no.." He breathed, dragging what was left of her as he fell back on his knees. She was melting, all over him, she needed to go back together. He needed her to come back together.

"Y-you're okay." Oliver told her when bright, blank and white eyes tried to flicker open. "You're okay now."

He was trying more to convince himself of it than anyone else, and he almost believed it when bits of her tensed in weak effort to stay together. She was trying, he could tell. She was trying so incredibly hard but he could see that it simply wasn't enough and she continued to melt and evaporate in his arms.

"Don't go..please-" Oliver choked on his words and clawed at the parts of her that spilled over onto the ground, desperately pressing them back into her, only for them to burst in his hands.

"Please, I'm sorry..I'm so sorry, I'm sorry. Dindet.." His words were the only thing he could hear, and they were far too late to mean anything now.

Oliver simply sat there, crumpling up as he tried to hold up the decaying corpse of his friend, his only friend. All while she melted away in his hands until the only thing left was a small orange thing that dripped into his hands after she was long evaporated.

"I'm sorry..I'm so sorry, I'm-"

"Oliver.." Chris's voice stirred him from his loss, if only a moment long enough for Oliver to twist his head around with a quiet, empty look of utter shock.

"You killed her." He said, almost too quiet to hear, but as Chris approached with meager effort to console him he bolted up and clutched the last bit of Dindet to his chest. "She was my friend!! And you KILLED HER!!"

Chris took a step back, lowering his hand as his eyes met Oliver's wild glare. For a quiet second, and that was all it took, he pieced together everything. "The foreign girl..."

Oliver stood up straight and brought his teary gaze back down to Dindet's only remains, "She's gone..."