CHAOS THEORY: a mathematical branch which states that even a small tweak can make the system behave completely differently. very small adjustments in the starting position of a chaotic system make a big difference after a while.
OR, one teenage girl...
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SEVEN.
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STILES STRUGGLES to carry the two girls at once. With Illa's legs screaming at her after every step and her head pounding, and with Lydia like a bomb threatening to explode, he has his hands full— both literally and figuratively.
The three of them trip over their own feet. Stiles is an already clumsy person, and with the added weight of two others, their limbs are a jumbled mess beneath them.
"Okay," Stiles says to Lydia as they messily round a corner, "you've got to try and stay on your feet. That goes for you, too, Illa, okay? You hear me? Neither of you are falling."
Easy for Stiles to say. He doesn't have voices screaming in his head, increasing in volume with every passing millisecond, or shooting pain coming from his bleeding knees. Lydia's whimpers are enough to shut Illa up about her own pain. She doesn't have it nearly as bad as the Banshee does; she can't complain.
"You had a plan?" Lydia weakly questions.
"Uh...yeah," Stiles half-lies after a moment's hesitation. "The plan was to get Illa. It looked good on paper, not so much in reality."
"Not my fault," Illa hisses through clenched teeth, shutting her eyes so tightly that she sees colors. Purple, green, and yellow dots merge behind the darkness her eyelids provide.
She snaps them back open just in time to be shoved to the ground.
Stiles, who'd also been pushed, rushes to catch her elbows before she falls onto her face. Illa glances up in horror, spitting her hair out of her mouth just in time to see what she's been dreading most this entire night.
Lydia drops to her knees with her entire body heaving from the heavy breaths she's inhaling. "I can't hold it!" Her hands cover her ears, eyes looking desperately toward the ceiling as if it could somehow provide some condolence. "I... can't... do... it!"
"Lydia—" Stiles tries to cut in, only to be interrupted by her heart-wrenching plea.
"Stiles, Illa, run!"
This is it. This is the moment she's been anticipating ever since she first saw visions of Stiles Stilinski. His refusal to leave Lydia will kill him in a matter of seconds – and result in her own demise as well if she doesn't get them both the hell out of here.
With a determined growl, Illa pushes herself to her feet in one fluid motion. Sheer adrenaline makes her movements stronger. Her limbs seem to be filled with lead as she stands up and shields Stiles' ears with her arms, knocking them both back just as Lydia's lethal scream begins to pierce her eardrums.
It's louder than before, if that's even possible. The doors and cement walls had saved them the first time, but now, without anything between her and the wailing woman's amplified cry, Illa feels her very eardrums begin to debilitate at the piercing noise.
