“But Finn says he’s just sick.”

    “You believe him? God, if you weren’t so good in bed...” Santana rolled her eyes, increasing her pace and ushering Puck to do the same. “Hudson looks like he’s gonna puke whenever anybody mentions it, he’s hiding something, it’s plain as day.”

   “Finn’s the one that lives with him, I’d say he knows best.” Came a tinny voice from the cell phone that Santana was holding-it was on speaker, and the rest of the New Directions, minus Finn and Kurt, were on the other end on conference call. Puck nodded in agreement with Tina, who had spoken. Santana wondered how he thought Tina was supposed to see him.

   “Finn also prayed to a friggin’ sandwich,” snapped Santana, “and if Hummel is so sick that we haven’t been allowed to visit for a whole two weeks now, then he should be in the hospital. I should know. My dad’s a doctor.”

   In fact, that was where she was dragging Puckerman to right now-her dad’s workplace. Dr. Lopez didn’t actually work in a hospital, though; he worked with the Guys in White Association. Santana wasn’t exactly sure what her daddy did for a living, but she knew it had something to do with the death of ghosts, and various other morbid ideas. He had told her, however, that if one of the rumoured ‘halfas’ were to end up in their hands, he would be the first doctor on the case to eliminate the ectoplasm in their bodies.

   “Well, I trust Finn, and I’m not going to question him. Poor Kurt just has an unfortunate cold, and when he gets better, he’ll be back at school and then everything will be back to normal. Now, really, regionals is in just under-”

   “Shut up, Rachel!” Santana was pleased to hear that she wasn’t the only one sick of her whiny voice. In fact, she was pretty sure that half the Glee Club had just told her off in one.

   Santana walked through the glass doors of the GIWA Building, walking purposely past the reception desk and making a beeline for the elevator. Puck followed as if he were on a leash. She smirked. He glared.

    “I have to admit, I am a little concerned,” piped up Quinn, “I mean, originally he said that Kurt was running a fever. Then when I asked him later he said that Kurt’s migraine still wasn’t going away. Then later he mumbled something about a neck brace.”

   “So either Finn’s lying, or Kurt’s immune system failed so hard that he got three things at once. I can see how those three can keep him out of school for two weeks, though.” Said Artie.

   “I wish I had an immune system. Emu’s are cute.”

   “Not the same thing, sweetheart” said Artie as Santana dug through her purse for her ID to let her through security. It was more of a formality than a necessity, but it certainly was a force of habit.

   Sometimes Santana wondered how they managed to keep their paranormal prisoners in their jail cells. She’d expressed her concern to her father once, and his response was to chuckle and say, “do you really think there are ghosts that powerful in Ohio, sweetie?”

   Well, if the halfa rumours were true...

   “Okay, this is great and all, but really, what are we supposed to do anything about it?” snapped Mercedes, and Santana could practically feel the rest of the Glee Club’s flinch. The dark diva had made no secret about the fact that no matter who she talked to (or yelled at, really) no progress had been made on even making the slightest bit of contact with one Kurt Hummel. Santana almost felt sorry for the guy; if he ever came back to McKinley, he was going to get the lecture of a lifetime; and a loud one, too.

    Unfortunately, Rachel saw her chance. “Exactly guys, there’s nothing we can do about it, we might as well start doing what we do best, and what we do best is singing. But if we don’t start on our set list-”

   “Shut up, Rachel!”

   “Okay, who decided to let her in on the call?” said Mercedes venomously.

     Santana and Puck stepped out of the elevator, and Santana led the way through the complicated maze of desks and scientists through to the lab Dr. Lopez worked, as the Glee Club frantically denied having anything to do with Rachel Berry’s presence.

    “Look, I don’t care why man-hands is in the call, I just care that Hummel isn’t.” Santana pointed out, bringing the club’s attention back to the task at hand, “and if Finn doesn’t fess up to where he’s keeping him, I’m going to freakin’ climb in through his bedroom window to figure out what’s up. So let’s get Hudson to fess up, because the last time I snuck into somebody’s house I broke a nail and that hurt like a bitch, so I’m not looking forward to doing it again.”

  “I don’t think that Finn’s keeping him anywhere.” Said Quinn, an eye roll evident in her voice. 

   Santana frowned as she found her path to her daddy’s lab blocked by a swarm of intensely excited scientists that she hadn’t noticed before. She sighed, took the phone off of speaker and began yelling at them in Spanish to let her through. They parted like the red sea, and she walked down the aisle like she was on the red carpet, Puck in tow, smirk on her face.

    As she stepped through the doors, she couldn’t hold back a gasp of alarm. The lab was in more chaos than she’d ever seen it before-and it generally was chaotic, what with the paranormal sciences being generally unexplored. She didn’t bother to go back to the phone before yanking one of the frenzied scientists gruffly by the arm and asking him what was going on.

     The scientist didn’t even seem upset that Santana’s nails were digging into his arms, most likely leaving vicious red marks (didn’t matter who you were, Santana had experience. Her nails were like claws). He looked punch drunk as he babbled, “we’ve caught a halfa, Ms Lopez, a real live halfa! Oh, you wouldn’t believe the progress we’ll make, and the fame! Here in Ohio, we’ve caught our very own halfa and...”

   Santana vaguely noticed that he still kept on talking despite having already pushed him away and putting her phone back on speaker so that she could keep talking the Glee Club.

  They were in the middle of an argument over whether or not Kurt would want them to continue working for sectionals without him there. Santana rolled her eyes; the curses of Rachel Berry.

 Somehow, Puck was the one who stepped in to stop the argument as Santana pushed her way through the crowd of over excited scientists. She wondered how they could hear him over the noise.

    “Guys, I’m actually worried about him,” she could hear Brittany say as she made her way into the core of the lab, which was much quieter, but still held an excited buzz to it, “I opened his locker today because I thought it was mine and there was nothing in it except for some letters cut from a magazine. I mean, isn’t that how bad guys make their threats? I don’t want Kurt to be threatened, he’s too nice.”

   Santana frantically snatched the phone from Puck’s hands (when had she passed the phone to him? Whoops) to comfort her friend, not noticing how the boy’s hands had gone limp. “No, boo, don’t worry, no one...” Santana stopped herself midsentence as she realised there actually were a sizable amount of people that would threaten Kurt. Worry built within her stomach. “Britt, what did the letters spell?”

   “Santana,” Puck whispered, his voice hoarse. He must have been yelling to Rachel over the scientists, she mused. It really had been loud in there. She waved him away.

   “Umm,” said Brittany, “they were all in different colours, it was weird. But the letters were a C, then an O, then R...no wait, there was a U before the R...” she paused.

   “Britt? Do you remember what the rest of the letters were?” she pressed.

  “Santana.” Said Puck, his voice a little louder; he even grabbed her shoulder to garner her attention.

  “Shut up Puck, I’m trying to deal with our Hummel emergency. Britt, tell me the rest of the letters.”

   “Oh! Um,” continued Brittany, and Santana could practically see her face scrunch up in an adorable look of concentration that made all the stressful hours of tutoring her worth it, “after the R there was...there was an A. And a G-you know, I’ve always liked G’s. They’re like O’s, but also like C’s. Like Kurt; he’s kind of like a girl, but he’s actually a boy. Oh, and also there was an E after that, and that was the end of it.”

   Santana hummed in concentration, made harder by the fact that Puck wouldn’t let go of her shoulder and shaking it, no matter how much she tried to slap his hand away. “So, that reads...”

   “Courage.” Said Mike, quiet until now, “that doesn’t sound like a death threat to me.”

  “He must have just put it there to make himself feel better,” Santana mused aloud, and Puck shook her shoulder so hard she nearly dropped the phone. “What do you want, Puckerman, because I will-!”

   She didn’t finish her sentence as she turned around to see what Puck was looking at.

  “Oh.” She breathed.

  She didn’t notice as the phone fell from her hands, clattering to the metal floor. She didn’t hear the shouts from the Glee club asking what had just happened. She didn’t even feel her own knees give way, only to have Puckerman’s strong arms wrap around her t stop her from falling.

  The only thing she saw was the viewing center in the middle of the lab, the one where the rumoured halfa was sitting on a sharp metal table, covered in glowing chains and even an eye cover, wearing only a thin hospital gown underneath.

   Her world when black for a moment.

_

   When she came to, she was sitting on a bench outside of the GIWA building, head buried in her knees, Puck’s hand rubbing soothing circles into her back.

   She looked up slowly. Puck didn’t wait for her to speak before saying “you bolted from the room. Your dad nearly freaked at me, and I had to tell him that Brittany was hurt and you had to leave. It was the only thing I could come up with.”

   She nodded slowly, tasting bile on her tongue.

 “I told everyone else,” he continued, “it was probably really stupid of me, but I wasn’t really thinking. I mean, it just, I mean, and it just came out of my mouth. Then I hung up on them.” His voice was apologetic. “I mean, I freaked out,” he continued, even quieter. “I don’t know what I was supposed to do.”

   Santana nodded again.

  “They’ve been calling back nonstop. I put the phone on silent.” He said. Santana figured he was just trying to fill the silence.

   “So” She began, “So, that was...that was real? That was really him in there?” she rasped out.

   Puck nodded.

  She let her eyes slide shut again. This was impossible. This was terrifying. This was...confusing as fuck.

  She was Santana Lopez, McKinley’s Queen Bee, Queen Bitch, with a sharp wit and a smokin’ hot body. Her daddy worked for the GIWA, and she had been proud of it for her whole life. She had never thought that she would see something like...that.

   “We’re gonna get him out of there.” Puck stated simply, as if he were planning a new song to sing in Glee Club.

 Santana snapped her head back up. “What?!” She all but screeched.

   “We’re gonna get him out of there.” He repeated, more firmly, “Look, I know that the phone call wasn’t going in that direction originally” that was true, it was originally a phone call between her and Brittany when Britt had wondered where Kurt had been so she’d let Mercedes in on the call and it all snowballed from there, “but we’re called the New Directions for a reason, Santana. And we’re gonna bust my boy Hummel out of that hellhole if it’s the last thing we do. Got it?”

   Santana stared at him, eyes wide for a moment. When had he become so goddamn poetic? Come to think of it, when did he start caring about Kurt so much?

   “But...” she wasn’t very coherent just yet, “security.”

  “You’ve been making fun of their lack of it for years. Are you with me, or not?”

  There was a long, pregnant pause. But at the end of it, Santana found herself nodding nervously.

   She had stolen a lot of stuff over the years, she reasoned with herself, so what if one of them happened to be alive?