Arrive at the campus lab and immediately secure the door, setting up defensive measures in case Marco's men track you there

You arrive at the campus laboratory by 9:15 am, heart pounding in your chest as you scan the familiar hallway before unlocking the door with your keycard. The lab—once just your workplace—now feels like both sanctuary and trap. You methodically secure the space, dragging a heavy metal cabinet against the secondary exit door and using duct tape from a supply drawer to secure the ventilation grates. After rigging a basic alarm system using a glass beaker balanced on the door handle, you settle in to wait, watching the minutes tick by with excruciating slowness.

By noon, your nerves are frayed. Every distant sound in the building makes you flinch—footsteps in the corridor, the hum of the air conditioning cycling on. Lina hasn't arrived. You check your watch obsessively as 12:30 comes and goes. One o'clock. No Diamond Girl. The fear that something has gone catastrophically wrong begins to gnaw at you.

At 1:45, you're pacing the lab, unable to concentrate on anything but worst-case scenarios. What if Marco's men replicated your formula correctly? What if the neutralizing compound failed? What if Lina is dead, or captured, or—

The air in the center of the laboratory suddenly compresses with an audible *blip*, and Diamond Girl materializes before you. Her crystal form catches the fluorescent lights, sending prismatic rainbows dancing across the lab equipment. But something's different—there's an intensity to her glow that wasn't there before, a subtle pulsation beneath the diamond surface.

"Holy fuck, Sam," she says, her voice carrying that velvet-wrapped-in-steel quality that belongs uniquely to her transformed state. "They were running after watching their compound fail on me this time. They thought they would replicate the same thing they did at Red Brick." A dark laugh escapes her. "You should have seen Viktor's face when I clenched his brain. He peed his pants before his brain exploded."

She paces the laboratory, her diamond form fluid and graceful despite its crystalline appearance. "I destroyed Willow Lane as well. Nothing left but rubble and corpses." She stops suddenly, turning to face you directly. "One thing I have to share... they installed speakers of some kind all over the place. The sound was tingling... not strong enough, but I thought maybe you would get what those are."

You feel a chill run down your spine. "Speakers? Producing what kind of sound?"

"High-frequency," she replies, her glowing eyes narrowing. "Similar to that device you used on me in the van, but amplified. Industrial scale."

Your mind races with the implications. "They're adapting. Taking what worked from our encounter and scaling it up." You move to your workstation, hands already reaching for a notebook. "Did you find anything about Marco's location? Or about the next hideout?"

Diamond Girl approaches, towering over you in her transformed state. The proximity of her crystal body raises the temperature around you noticeably, like standing near a sun-warmed window. "I found something better," she says, her diamond lips curving into a predatory smile. "I found their master list. All hideouts, including ones you didn't know about. And Sam..." She leans closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I know where Marco is right now."

The triumph in her voice sends a shiver of anticipation through you. Jane's killer, finally within reach. But the scientist in you is still processing the information about the speakers. If Marco's remaining men develop a full-scale sonic weapon based on your research, even Diamond Girl might be ****.

"We need to move fast," you say, looking up at her towering form. "Before they have time to build something that can hurt you."