The Faculty

The principal of Herrington High is attacked in the parking lot late one night. The next day, nerdy perennial-punching-bag Casey Connor finds a small organism on the football field — something alive, something wrong. The teachers begin to change: calmer, more unified, disturbingly purposeful. One by one the faculty falls in line.

Six students fall together by circumstance: Casey; Zeke Tyler, the charming delinquent who sells homemade stimulant powder called scat out of his car; popular editor Delilah; goth outsider Stokely; football captain Stan, who just quit the team; and Marybeth, a sweet transfer from Georgia who arrived just as all of this started. They discover that Zeke's drug — concentrated caffeine — kills the parasite on contact. They also discover the infection spreads through water.

Paranoia takes over. The students turn on each other, testing with the drug, trying to find who's already gone. The school empties of allies. Staff and students fall under control. The group agrees: find the queen, kill the queen, and every infected host snaps free.

Suspicion circles Stokely, then Zeke, then lands on Marybeth — the new girl, the outsider, the one whose arrival coincided exactly with the start of the outbreak. She drops the act. She is the queen, and she has been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Casey drives one of Zeke's drug pens directly into Marybeth's eye. The queen dies. Every infected teacher, student, and coach snaps back — dazed, restored, free. The school returns to normal. Casey, once invisible, is now the boy who saved the world.