Some chapters are about events. This one is about influence.

Labs and Agar Plates steps outside the core trio and looks in from the edges, through the eyes of Greg Thompson, a senior at East Bay High. Assigned as Anna Ko’s lab partner, Greg expects routine schoolwork. What he encounters instead is a standard of care and discipline that quietly reshapes how he thinks about work, responsibility, and himself.

Set during the early chapters of Book 1, this side chapter shows how the story looks when the “heroes” aren’t being heroic at all. Just present. Just working. Just doing what they said they would do.

This is a calm, methodical chapter about ordinary afternoons, agar plates, and the kind of influence that doesn’t announce itself.

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