Three students slip into the locked biology lab after dark and accidentally wake up something they were never meant to touch.
When Adam pushed open the biology lab door, the clock in the corridor had just clicked past ten. During the day, this room might as well have been sealed with concrete. Tonight, thanks to Ola and a paperclip she treated like a master key, it was open for a very unofficial visit.
For Adam, Ola, and Michael, this was the last possible rescue mission before tomorrow's biology test. That was the official version, anyway. In reality, they had come to cram, panic, and pretend that looking at microscopes in the dark counted as revision.
The lab glowed in the thin beams of their torches. Shelves of test tubes, preserved specimens, and old notebooks threw back odd shadows, turning the room into something between a museum and a crime scene. Ola kept glancing at the teacher's locked cabinet, the one everyone claimed held either yeast samples or the teacher's sense of humour, whichever was more toxic.
"Tell me I'm not the only one who smells that," Michael muttered, wrinkling his nose. "It smells like a grocery store after closing."
Adam barely heard him. In the corner, inside a glass aquarium that should have held fish, sat a few plastic pumpkins, a tiny disco ball, and a jar with a label that read: DO NOT OPEN! (Seriously.)
Ola's eyes lit up with the kind of bad idea that arrived fully formed. "We should open it," she said.
"That's not a reason," Adam said, but his hand was already on the lid.
They leaned in together. For a second nothing happened. Then Adam twisted the jar open, and the lab gave a sound like a hamster clearing its throat inside a blender. The disco ball flashed once, sharp and silver, and a plume of purple smoke rolled up out of the aquarium.
All three froze.
Then, from the corridor outside, came the unmistakable sound of footsteps stopping right at the lab door.