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"Miss Soriano," said the voice. "Come in."

Hero Barrett was sitting at her desk. And Hero Barrett looked terrible. Serenade looked like a girl who had cried for a very long time, her pink eyes puffy and looking a little bit of a mess; Hero Barrett simply looked like somebody who had more or less given up. Her eyes were dead, shaded underneath by the puffy bags of somebody who had eschewed sleep. Hero shuffled the papers she was working on and made the gesture for Serenade to come in; there was another chair next to her desk, and obviously it was meant for her sitting purposes.

There was a very awkward pause.

"Don't worry about the play work," she said gruffly. "I've completed it all; all it needs is for you to go to the copier and make copies for Miss Johnson."

Another awkward pause.

"Miss Soriano," she said. "I actually wanted to talk to you briefly concerning -- Mr. Lawson."

"Mr. Lawson," said Hero, "asked me to... look after you, in the event of his death."

Hero looked at her, empty-eyed. Hero was as dry-eyed as a stone, free of tears or regret, simply a rock who was sitting in a chair and looking at her. Her red-gold hair was combed flat; her eyes, reflecting of nothing in return. "Mr. Lawson had an idea that he was going to die," she continued, "and asked me personally to make sure that you were all right."

Hero was not a comforting person. But she said: "If you have any thoughts or doubts, or favours needed, or if you're in need of anything -- my door is open to you."

Jude would have gone for the approach with less "stick up the butt."

"Mr. Lawson," said the girl in front of her, now with a good heaped dollop of frost, "was somebody singularly unable to ever take advice, or assistance, or actually step back and let somebody take control, or -- "

She took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose, obviously trying to get some control back. Obviously Jude had -- refused to take medication for the meningitis? Or tell somebody? It all seemed really, really baffling. "Yes," she said. "I let him go and die. That's what I did. I can't honestly say I did anything different. If you'd like to blame me, I won't think any less of you for it."

But she said, stiffly: "Keep in mind that Jude Lawson is -- was -- one of the stubbornest men I have ever met."

A kinder, more empathetic woman might have had better words of comfort to give the obviously distressed girl, but Hero was of the breed that lived by a curiously British stiff upper lip. She looked at Serenade's wobbly lower lip as though it were an animal she didn't quite know how to treat. It was difficult not to be affected by Serenade; she was a little bit helpless-looking, fragile, but no matter how helpless or fragile she looked Hero considered things like 'sympathy' 'patronizing'.

"Of course there's a use blaming something," she said. "Mr. Lawson was murdered. And I'm going to find who, what, where or how -- there is a time under Heaven for everything, Serenade, and right now? Feel free to blame."

"No," said Hero curtly, "not unless bacterial meningitis is symptomatic pf massive head trauma and huge wounds to the chest. Put bluntly, I was the last one to see Mr. Lawson alive, and I was also the last one to see him dead -- I found him dead in the courtyard two nights ago. I was -- taken out before I could do anything or find out anything. I'm no forensics expert."

It hurt Hero to say that she wasn't the expert on anything, but this slipped out grudgingly and wearily. "Miss Soriano, you've got to realise that Barren Pines is no longer safe. And barely a school. Mr. Lawson was murdered, and I've every idea that the others met a similar end. Face up to the facts. All of us are caught in a fairly hellish closed-circuit trap."

Pause.

"One that I have to get you out of."

Hero was now brooding over her clasped hands, which she had rested her chin on as she stared a little off to the side of the wall. Away from Serenade. "No," she said. "This is much more dramatic than 'transferring'. I'm talking about escaping, Miss Soriano. I think we have to get you out of here as soon as humanly possible. I mean getting off the campus and going back to your home."

She looked utterly serious, meeting Serenade's large cerise-coloured eyes now. Deadly serious. Jude must have died horribly.

"You do have a home to go back to?"

"I've written up a plan," said the girl in front of her crisply, already shuffling through her sheaf of papers and pulling out one -- a neatly word-processed budget list. "You're my gofer. You need to go and get things for that ridiculous play that's going on; that's your plan to get off the campus. Here."

There was another piece of paper slipped forward. "This is extraordinarily poorly-made, but thankfully Miss Thorne spent time having to have an x-ray for a wrist break -- this paper will get you into an ER, or at least it should. Hopefully an ER will show you if you have anything implanted in your body and you can get into the hospital without being caught by the Barren Pines staff; Destiny City Memorial is over the opposite side of the city -- "

Hero Barrett's door creaked open.

It was two of the nurses -- well, one doctor and one nurse. They were both smiling kindly.

"We didn't know you had company," the doctor said shamefacedly. "I'm afraid, Miss Barrett, that you've been displaying meningitis symptoms -- we need you to go into quarantine. If you've been with Serenade, she should go too."

If Serenade looked closely, she could see that Hero had gone utterly tense, her knuckles white, her scarlet eyes narrowed. "You're wrong," she said. Was that fear, or just Hero being dismissive? "I'm in perfect health. So is Miss Soriano."

The doctor took a small handgun out of his pocket, and flipped the safety. "Are you?" he said. "Are you really?"