Victor turned his head and saw the figure in the dark.
Dumont.
The doctor was sitting on a bench a couple feet away, half hidden by shadow.
Victor looked around, and realized he was lying in the back of an ambulance.
The seconds before his episode came back in fragments, broken frames, but they didn’t explain how he’d gotten from the basement floor to here.
“I found you,” explained the doctor, unprompted, “outside the morgue. Well, I found the soldiers first.”
“You didn’t turn me over to EON,” observed Victor. “Why?”
Dumont examined his hands. “You could have killed me up on the fifth floor. You didn’t.”
It hadn’t been an act of mercy. There had simply been no point.
“And the soldiers?” asked Victor.
“They were already dead.”
“So was I.”
Dumont nodded. “Medicine is full of calculated risks and split-second decisions. I made one.”
“You could have walked away.”
“I may not be ExtraOrdinary,” said Dumont, “but I am a doctor. And I took an oath.”
A siren tore through the air nearby, and Victor tensed, but it was only another ambulance, pulling out of the bay. The bay . . .
“We’re still at the hospital?” asked Victor.
“Obviously,” said Dumont. “I said I’d help you live, not help you escape. Frankly, I was beginning to doubt your odds of doing either.”
Victor frowned, feeling his pockets for his phone. “How long was I gone?”
“Nearly four and a half minutes.”
Victor swore under his breath. No wonder the doctor hadn’t driven away.
“I should run some tests,” continued Dumont, producing a penlight, “make sure your cognitive function hasn’t been—”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Victor. There was nothing Dumont could do for him now—nothing that would make a difference. And while four and a half minutes was far too long to be dead, it wasn’t long enough for EON’s enforcement team to clear out. They would still be on-site. How long until more joined them?
Victor nodded at the front of the ambulance. “I assume you can drive?”
Dumont hesitated. “I can, but . . .”
“Get behind the wheel.”
Dumont didn’t move.
Victor wasn’t in the mood to torture him, so he resorted to logic instead. “You said they had eyes on your family. If you go back in there now, they’ll know you helped me escape.”
Dumont frowned. “And how does driving you away make me less complicit?”
“You’re not an accomplice,” said Victor, producing a pair of cable-ties from a toolbox. “You’re a hostage. I can tie you to the steering wheel now, or later. It’s up to you.”
The doctor silently climbed behind the wheel. Victor took the passenger’s seat. He flipped the sirens on.
“Where am I going?” asked Dumont.
Victor turned the question over. “There’s a bus station on the southern edge of the city. Drive.”
Dumont hit the gas, and the ambulance peeled out of the bay. After a few blocks, Victor killed the sirens and the lights. He sat back in the seat, flexing his fingers. He could feel the doctor cutting glances at him.
“Eyes on the road,” said Victor.
Ten minutes later, the bus depot came into sight, and Victor pointed to an empty stretch of sidewalk.
“There,” he said.
As Dumont started guiding the ambulance off the road, Victor reached over, took the wheel, and jerked it, forcing the vehicle up onto the curb.
“Don’t forget,” he said, “you’re in distress.” Before Dumont could protest, Victor zip-tied his hands to the wheel. “Do you have a phone on you?” Dumont nodded at his pocket.
Victor drew the cell from the doctor’s coat and threw it out the window.
“There,” he said, climbing out of the ambulance.
Now he had a head start.
III
THE DAY BEFORE
EON
STELL stood before the bay of screens, arms crossed, watching it all fall apart. Radio chatter crackled from the speaker on the desk.
“No sign of target.”
“Soldiers down.”
“Seal the perimeter.”
What a goddamned catastrophe, thought Stell, sinking down into his chair.
Eli’s trap had succeeded, but his own agents had failed. Three of them were dead—two bleeding from their ears and noses on a sublevel, one knifed in the throat on the first floor—the rest had been fucking useless.
Whether Victor had seen past the bait to the hook, or simply wriggled free, one thing was clear—he hadn’t done it alone.
Several of Stell’s agents had been shot at by a male orderly, a receptionist, and a female doctor—but Stell had a feeling they were all the same person. One of his men had shot back, caught the doctor in the shoulder. At that same moment, halfway across the hospital, a doctor matching her exact description had collapsed, bleeding, in the middle of scrubbing in for surgery.
The shapeshifter—Marcella’s shapeshifter—had been there.
And she’d helped Victor escape.
Stell took up his phone and dialed.
“Joseph,” said that smooth voice.
“Where is Victor Vale?” demanded Stell through gritted teeth.
“You were cheating.”
“This isn’t a game. You agreed to deliver him. Instead, you are the reason he’s still free. When do you intend to uphold your end of the deal?”
Marcella sighed. “Men are always so impatient. Perhaps it comes from a lifetime of being given what you want, when you want it. Sometimes, Joseph, you just have to wait.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” said Marcella. “Before the party.”
Stell’s chest tightened. “What party?”
“Didn’t you get my invitation?” A stack of mail sat forgotten on the edge of Stell’s desk. He began rifling through it. “I considered holding on to him until after . . .”
Stell found the card, crisp and white, with a gold M embossed on the front. It was unstamped. Someone had delivered it by hand. Stell broke the seal.
“It would certainly keep you out of my way,” Marcella was saying, “but then again, I wouldn’t want you to miss the show . . .”
Marcella Morgan and her associates . . .
Stell read the invitation once, and then again—he couldn’t believe what he was looking at. He didn’t want to believe it.
. . . Merit’s most extraordinary venture.
“This is the opposite of lying low,” he growled.
“What can I say? I’ve never been understated.”
“We had a deal.”
“We did,” said Marcella. “For two weeks. Beyond that, we both knew it wouldn’t last. But I have appreciated the ceasefire. It gave me time to print my invitations.”
“Marcella—”
But she’d already hung up.
Stell swept a mug from his table. It shattered, dark drops of coffee painting the floor.
In seconds, Rios was there.
“Sir?” she asked, surveying the broken cup, the papers displaced in his search for the card, the crisp white invitation crumpled in his hand.
Stell slumped back in his chair, Eli’s voice playing in his head.
You made a deal?
Someone this powerful belongs in the ground.
Send me.
Stell’s gaze went to the slim silver briefcase the board had given him, the collar nested inside.
Agent Rios was still standing there, silent, waiting.
Stell rose to his feet. “Prepare a transport team for tomorrow.”
Rios raised a brow. “For which prisoner?”
“Cardale.”
* * *
STELL found Eli sitting on the edge of his cot, fingers laced and head bowed, as if he were praying.
Or simply waiting.
At the sound of Stell’s approach, his head drifted up. “Director. Has my trap yielded any results?”
Stell hesitated. “Not yet,” he lied. There was no reason for Eli to know about Vale’s escape, and a dozen reasons to keep him in the dark. Especially considering what he was about to do. “Have you been considering the problem of Marcella?”
Eli rose. “My assessment hasn’t changed.”
“I’m not asking for your sentence,” said Stell, “I’m asking for your method. How would you dispatch her?”
“How would I?”
“You do still believe you are the best equipped for the task.”
A ghost of a smile. “I do.”
“Let me be very clear,” said Stell. “I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to,” said Eli.
Stell shook his head. What was he thinking? “We still don’t know if you can even defeat Marcella.”
Eli smiled grimly. “Haverty spent a year trying to find the limits of my regeneration. He never succeeded.”
“Her power isn’t the only problem,” said Stell. “After all, Marcella is not acting alone.”
“Neither am I,” pressed Eli, gesturing at the cell, at EON. “The hard part isn’t killing three EOs, Director. It’s collecting them in one place, and then separating them so they can’t work together. Do that, and your agents can take care of the other two EOs while I see to Marcella. I assure you, under the right conditions, defeating them is more than possible.”