Dr. Fraiser pushed them hard. Derrick had never pulled so many all-nighters in his life. He fell asleep for a few hours at a time on the student lounge couch and woke up to work again. It wasn’t just the artifacts that had them struggling; they had to write an analysis and review all the field notes. It didn’t help that the three assistants helping them were from the classics department, and kept pulling Dr. Fraiser aside to ask questions.

Derrick rubbed his eyes and glared at the white screen in front of him. This was the third rewrite of their abstract, and the letters were swimming around. 

“I’m done,” he said. The screen clicked as he slapped it closed and stomped over to the couch. The dark blue fabric scratched against his skin when he face-planted into it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“Dude,” Kally whispered. “There’s been an unholy amount of ass on that. Don’t put your face in it.” She stared at him over her own computer screen, an energy drink in one hand. Derrick was pretty sure she had more Red Bull than blood in her veins by now. 

“To die by ass would be an honor,” he mumbled. There was nothing that could get him to get up. Not a single thing. 

“We don’t need to know about your sex life,” Taylor snipped. He’d traded his contacts for a blocky pair of glasses with lenses thick enough to replace a magnifying glass. He frowned at his pages, highlighted something, and moved on. “I’m pretty sure some doctoral candidates had sex on that couch a while ago. It’s been a hot topic for days.” 

Derrick sprang up and joined Kally at the window table. 

“Do you have hand sanitizer?” he whispered. She wordlessly handed him a bottle of Bath and Body Works apple pie-scented sanitizer. He ended up using half the bottle on every bit of exposed skin he could reach. 

“Did Dr. Fraiser say anything about these bone scans?” Taylor asked. 

“Nothing I can recall,” Kally said before she stood up to look over his shoulder. She looked curious, then confused as her eyebrows drew together and she leaned closer. “What the hell?” 

“What?” Derrick left the table to join them, peering over Taylor’s other shoulder. 

Taylor leaned away. “Bruv, you smell like a candle aisle,” he hissed, covering his nose. “And not in a good way.” 

“Blame your girlfriend,” Derrick sighed. “What’s up with the scans?” 

The pages in front of him were of the entire skeletons, laid out anatomically and photographed in gray scale on a black background. The label on the bottom said it came from the larger Scandinavian skeleton.

“You see these spots?” Kally pointed at a series of bones. The scan left the bones a fuzzy gray color, but the ones Kally pointed to were whiter, practically glowing. A few vertebrae, the left femur, and the top of the skull stood out the most. The arms and legs had a few scattered white dots, but they weren’t as noticeable.

“What does that mean?” he asked. 

“It usually means excessive bone growth,” Taylor explained. “And here, see how the femur is curved?” He ran a finger along the bone in the image. “The slight bowing may be caused by childhood calcium deficiency.”

“We already established she seemed well-fed throughout her life,” Kally cut in. “But I’m not an osteologist. The scan probably picked up on the slight enlargements in the spine and the skull, plus the bowing we didn’t notice at first glance.” 

“What causes that?” Derrick hadn’t taken an osteology course yet, but he was registered to next year. One of his professors recommended it. Now he could understand why.

“No idea!” Kally flung her hands in the air with a tired grin. “We’ll need to kick this back to Dr. Fraiser. See what she says.” 

They composed the email together. All of their tired brains combined created something semi-coherent before Taylor hit send. 

“I vote we quit for the night,” Kally proposed. “Get some rest in an actual bed and start again in the morning.” They met her suggestion with tired nods and they all fled from the building. 

As they descended the stairs, Derrick’s phone buzzed. From a quick glance, he knew it was another newspaper attempting to obtain his side of the story. He rolled his eyes and sent the email to spam. Kally peeked at his screen in time to see the subject line. 

“They’ve been trying to get a hold of you too, huh?” she asked. 

He confirmed, “This is the fifth one.”  

“It’s getting quite annoying,” Taylor groaned. 

“I’ve been blocking people left and right, it feels like.” Kally slumped against Taylor, nearly making them both tumble down the stairs. “Dr. Fraiser should be proud. We are excellent little secret-keepers.” 

As they emerged from the building, Derrick breathed deep lungfuls of damp post-rain air. The grass, covered in drops from the recent storm, glittered under the streetlights as they walked through the campus. When he separated from his classmates, it picked up again. 

“Could have been in Jamaica,” he muttered to himself for probably the thousandth time since landing in Scotland. Though he’d gradually noticed the resentment tapering off the longer he spent in the company of his friends and their combined goal. All thoughts vanished as he entered his room, except for the need for sleep. He plopped onto his bed and passed out mid-goodnight text to Kiara. 

When he arrived in the lab the next morning, Kally and Taylor were already there and both heavily caffeinated. Kally was double fisting expresso cans and Taylor had a travel mug the size of his head on the table in front of him. 

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked them. He almost thought Kally’s irises were vibrating when she turned to him. 

“I think I’ve hit that point of over-tired where your brain thinks that you aren’t tired because you’re so tired,” she said with an eye twitch. “I’m one bad thing away from breaking into tears.” She leaned forward and her forehead met the table with a loud thunk. 

“Don’t poke her,” Taylor whispered. “She’s fragile.” 

“You three look like a rubbish heap,” Dr. Fraiser drawled as she strolled in with a small box that smelled heavenly. She dropped it on the table and opened the lid. Four steaming cheese and chive scones, each the size of a plate, sat waiting for them. Not ones to turn down free food, they all grabbed one. The hot, fluffy bread and the savory cheese exploded over Derrick’s tastebuds and chased away the stale coffee aftertaste that had been a constant companion for the past three days. 

“Beautiful goddess,” Kally moaned after inhaling half of her scone. “Thank you for taking pity on these poor worshipers.” 

“Hush,” Dr. Fraiser said. She nibbled her scone much more slowly as she waited for them to finish. “I realized after your email that I’d forgotten to let you three know about the enlarged bones.” 

“Yes,” Taylor sniffed. He blinked rapidly, yawned and stretched. Derrick heard his spine pop as he straightened. “What’s that about?” 

“We discovered it after you left for your trip.” She pulled a folder out of her messenger bag and set it on the table. “I consulted with a bio-archaeologist, Dr. MacDannan, who specializes in osteo-archaeology. We saw the markers on a scan, and no one wanted to identify them without an expert opinion.” She shuffled the papers inside of it and pulled out the scan that had grabbed their attention and an email response, probably from the consultant. “He said it’s likely Paget’s disease of bone. I had him pop over to the lab to check in person as well.”

“What are the symptoms?” Derrick asked. 

“The new bone grows too rapidly and can make certain bones become enlarged.” She pointed at the scan. “Obvious in spine and skull.”

“Is that what caused the femur?” Taylor gave Kally the last half of his scone and leaned in, clearly interested. 

“Bowing is another common effect,” Dr. Fraiser agreed. “According to Dr. MacDannan, based on the amount of growth and the areas affected, she was in the early stages or had a very mild form. The areas in her spine would have caused the most trouble. The vertebrae affected would have caused pinching in the nerves. She probably had some numbness, muscle and bone aches. Maybe she broke bones more easily.”

“We saw some broken bones.” A few crumbs littered Kally’s lips as she swallowed the last bit of scone and continued. “I checked our notes from the initial review last night; the enlarged areas on the scan match up with where we noted healed breaks. Did Dr. MacDannan mention those at all?”

“I’m just getting to that,” Dr. Fraiser said. “He said all the most recent breaks happened within a year. The left arm and tibia have two breaks. He said that they were more likely fractures than true breaks. I suspect she had an accident, and all three occurred at once.”

“If the spine causes nerve damage, what happens if it gets to the skull?” Derrick wondered aloud. The white line on her head and two enlarged vertebrae were minor but definitely problematic.

“Dr. MacDannan said in a mild case it could be headaches. In a worse case, she could have been losing her hearing.”

“Are we certain this didn’t kill her?” Kally asked. 

“Yes.” Dr. Fraiser pointed at the notes firmly. “But remember, we assumed that the unhealed slice in the bone ultimately led to her death. MacDannan said that happened within another year of the three breaks. She was likely in a lot of pain as the disease progressed.”

“So, it might not have killed her, but it probably contributed?” Taylor summed up.

“I believe so.  If the final wound was from an altercation, her abilities might have been inhibited.”

“So, we can guess why the first one died,” Derrick said. “How did the second woman die simultaneously?” He looked around the table. Kally and Taylor looked confused. Dr. Fraiser looked thoughtful. “When we did the tests, the Scandinavian woman was around late forties, right?” He asked. When Taylor nodded, he kept going. “How old was the Irish woman?”

“Around the same age, but there were no bone diseases or trauma indicators present to reveal a cause of death clearly,” Dr. Fraiser helpfully supplied. 

“So, what killed her?”