The mall still smelled like buttery popcorn mixed with the cold blast of air-conditioning overhead. Robin, Steve, and {{user}} stumbled out of the movie theater like they were trying to walk on a boat during a storm. The Back to the Future soundtrack echoed inside their skulls, warped and metallic, like it was playing from inside their heads.
“Water,” Steve announced, pointing dramatically at the drinking fountain in front of the movie posters. He tripped twice on the way before finally bending over the cold metal.
Robin just rolled her eyes, letting her body sag against the wall. “Look at him… conquering the drinking fountain. Peak heroism,” she muttered with a crooked smile.
{{user}} steadied Robin by the arm. “Come on… before he slips and drowns himself in that thing.”
The two of them started down the overly bright hallway. Robin stopped abruptly, pointing upward with the awestruck expression of someone admiring Renaissance art. “Look at the ceiling… it’s so pretty… it looks… it looks like it’s breathing…”
And it did look like that. The lights doubled and stretched, moving as if they were dancing underneath the ceiling tiles. Every flicker left a colored trail that spun and warped, and a wave of nausea crawled up their throats.
They practically dragged themselves to the women’s bathroom, shoving the door with their shoulders because neither could coordinate their hand with the doorknob properly. The moment they stepped inside, the nausea steamrolled any remaining sense of dignity.
They each dove into a stall, clinging to the cold porcelain. The sound was awful. The feeling was worse.
Robin was the first to breathe normally again, wiping her mouth with the collar of her shirt. “Ugh… if I die, tell Steve he’s… a professional dingus. A complete idiot. It’ll help him move on.”
{{user}}, her chin resting on her arm, let out a pitiful groan. “If I die, tell my mom that… actually, no. Don’t tell her anything. Just… pretend you never met me.”
Robin let out a raspy, exhausted laugh. “You’re more drugged than I am…”
A humiliating moment later, Robin sat on the floor with her legs stretched out, her feet pressed against the stall wall. She stared up at the ceiling like she was waiting for it to talk to her.
“Hey… the ceiling stopped spinning for me. Did it stop for you too?”
{{user}} lifted her head just enough to look up. The white fluorescent lights still pulsed, making her brain throb. “Ugh… no. I don’t think I threw up everything…”
Robin snorted softly, taking a deep breath as if trying to clear her mind without much success. “Okay… we need to test if our brains are working. Like… a cognitive warm-up. Let’s play a game. Interrogate me,” she said, exaggerating a goofy Russian accent.
{{user}} laughed, even through the dizziness. “Alright. You first.”
Robin thought for half a second, then blurted, “Have you… ever dated?”
{{user}} blinked slowly, the world still spinning. Something inside them just loosened. Maybe the serum, maybe the dizziness, maybe Robin’s strange sincerity in asking something so personal.
And then she said it, as casually as someone commenting on the weather: “I was the straight cure for one of my exes.”
Silence dropped immediately. Robin froze. Literally stopped breathing for three seconds. “Wha—what?!”
{{user}}, still leaning forward, let out a tired little laugh. “Yeah, like… she swore she was straight. Until she wasn’t. It happens.”
Robin instantly scrambled toward the divider, pushing herself into {{user}}’s stall. She needed to be face-to-face to process that. She raised a hand, demanding silence, mostly for her own brain. “Wait. Wait. Wait. So you’re…”
{{user}} raised an eyebrow. “Lesbian? Uh-huh. I… kinda assumed it was obvious.”
Robin pressed a hand to her chest, completely offended. “Obvious?! {{user}}, I’ve spent days thinking I was the only lesbian in this stupid apocalypse-russian-secret-base shopping mall!”