Eli loomed over him, leaning his weight on the blade. Victor’s arms trembled from the effort, but little by little, he lost ground until the tip of the knife parted the skin of his throat.
* * *
EVERY end may be a new beginning, but every beginning had to end.
Eli Ever understood that, leaning over his old friend.
Victor Vale, weary, bleeding, broken, belonged in the ground.
It was a mercy to put him there.
“My time will come,” he said, as the knifepoint sliced Victor’s skin. “But yours is now. And this time,” he said, “I’ll make sure you—”
A sound tore through the steel room, sudden and deafening.
Eli’s grip faltered as pain, molten hot, tore through his back—through skin and muscle and something deeper.
Victor still lay beneath him, gasping, but alive, and Eli went to finish what he’d started, but the knife hung from his fingers. He couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel anything but the pain in his chest.
He looked down, and saw a broad red stain blossoming across his skin.
His breath hitched, copper filling his mouth, and then he was back on the floor of a darkened apartment at Lockland, sitting in a pool of blood, carving lines into his arms and asking God to tell him why, to take the power when he didn’t need it anymore.
Now, as he looked up from the hole in his chest, he saw the girl, her white-blond hair and ice blue eyes, so familiar, beyond the barrel of the gun.
Serena?
But then Eli was falling—
He never hit the ground.
XXII
THE LAST NIGHT
SAFE
SYDNEY stood at the mouth of the storage locker, still gripping the gun.
Dol whined behind her, pacing nervously, but Sydney kept the weapon trained on Eli, waiting for him to get back up, to turn on her, to shake his head at her weapon, her futile attempt to stop him.
Eli didn’t rise.
But Victor did. He struggled to his feet, one hand to the shallow wound at his throat as he said, “He’s dead.”
The words seemed wrong, impossible. Victor didn’t seem to believe them, and neither could Sydney.
Eli was—forever. An immortal ghost, a monster who would follow Sydney through every nightmare, every year, plaguing her until there was no one left to hide behind, nowhere left to run.
Eli Ever wouldn’t die.
Couldn’t die.
But there he was on the ground—lifeless. She fired two more shots into his back, just to be sure. And then Victor was there, guiding the gun from her white-knuckled grip, repeating himself in a slow, steady voice.
“He’s dead.”
Sydney dragged her eyes away from Eli’s body, and studied Victor. The ribbon of blood running from his throat. The hole in his shoulder. The arm he’d wrapped around his ribs.
“You’re hurt.”
“I am,” said Victor. “But I’m alive.”
Car doors slammed nearby, and Victor tensed. “EON,” he muttered, putting himself in front of Sydney as footsteps pounded down the hall. But Dol only watched, and waited, and when the door rose the rest of the way, it wasn’t soldiers, but Mitch.
He paled as he took in the storage locker, the makeshift operating table, the bodies on the floor, Victor’s injuries, and the gun in Sydney’s hand. “EON’s not far behind me,” he said. “We have to go. Now.”
Sydney started forward, but Victor didn’t follow. She pulled on his arm, felt instantly guilty when she saw the pain cross his face, and realized how much of the blood in here must be his.
“Can you walk?” she pleaded.
“You go ahead,” he said tightly.
“No,” said Sydney. “We’re not splitting up.”
Victor turned and, cringing, knelt in front of her.
“There’s something I have to do.” Sydney was already shaking her head, but Victor reached out and put a hand on her cheek, the gesture so strange, so gentle, it stopped her cold.
“Syd,” he said, “look at me.”
She met his eyes. Those eyes that after everything still felt like family, like safety, like home.
“I have to do this. But I’ll meet you as soon as I’m done.”
“Where?”
“Where I first found you.”
The location was burned into Syd’s memory. The stretch of interstate outside the city.
The sign that read Merit—23 miles.
“I’ll meet you at midnight.”
“Do you promise?”
Victor held her gaze. “I promise.”
Sydney knew he was lying.
She always knew when he was lying.
And she also knew she couldn’t stop him. Wouldn’t stop him. So she nodded, and followed Mitch out.
* * *
VICTOR didn’t have much time.
He waited until Mitch and Syd were out of sight, and then returned to the storage unit. He fought to focus as he dragged his aching limbs across the room, stepping around Eli’s body.
It was like a magnet, constantly drawing his eye, but Victor forced himself not to stop and look at it. Not to think about what it meant, that Eli Cardale was really, truly dead. The way the knowledge knocked Victor off-balance. A counterweight finally removed.
An opposite but equal force erased.
Instead, Victor turned his attention to Haverty’s tools, and got to work.
EXODUS
I
AFTER
STELL’S APARTMENT
VICTOR ran his fingers over the surface of his phone.
11:45 p.m.
Fifteen minutes until midnight, and he was not on his way out of town.
Victor settled back into the worn armchair, tuning the dials of his own nerves, to test their strength. Haverty’s serum had worn off a few hours before—it had been like a limb returning to feeling, nerves initially pins-and-needles sharp before finally settling back under control.
But as Victor’s power returned, so had the humming in his head, the crackle of static. The beginnings of another episode. But only the beginnings. That was the strange thing—before stepping into the storage locker, his limbs had been buzzing, the current minutes from overtaking him. When Haverty’s serum suppressed his power, it had suppressed the episode, too. Reset something, deep inside Victor’s nervous system.
He drew a vial from his coat pocket—one of six that he’d collected from Haverty’s storage locker. Its contents were an electric blue, even in the darkness of the empty apartment.
The liquid represented an extreme solution, but it also represented progress.
He’d have to be mindful—each time Victor used the serum, he would be trading a death for a window of vulnerability, a period without powers—but he was already making notes—plans, really.
Perhaps, with the right dosage, he could find a balance. And perhaps was more than Victor had had to work with in a very long time.
His phone lit up—he had switched it to silent, but it still flashed brightly, a familiar number on the screen.
Sydney.
Victor didn’t answer.
He watched the screen until it gave way again to darkness, then slipped the phone in his pocket as footsteps sounded beyond the door. A few seconds later, the rattle of a key in the lock, and Stell limped into view, one foot encased in a medical boot. He tossed his keys into a bowl, didn’t bother turning on the lights, just hobbled to the kitchen and poured himself a drink.
The director of EON had the liquor halfway to his lips when he finally realized he wasn’t alone.
He set the drink back down.
“Victor.”
To his credit, Stell didn’t hesitate, simply drew a gun and aimed it at Victor’s head. Or at least, he meant to. But Victor stilled the man’s hand.
Stell grimaced, fighting the invisible weight around his fingers. But it was a battle of wills, and Victor’s would always be stronger.
Victor lifted his own hand, turning it, and like a puppet, so did Stell, until his gun was resting against his own head.
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” said Stell.
“Twice you locked me in a cage,” said Victor. “I don’t intend to let it happen a third time.”
“And what will killing me do?” snapped Stell. “It won’t stop the rise of EON. The initiative is bigger than me, and growing every day.”
“I know,” said Victor, guiding Stell’s finger to the trigger.
“God dammit, listen. If you kill me, you will make yourself EON’s number-one enemy, their primary target. They will never stop hunting you.”
Victor smiled grimly.
“I know.”
He closed his hand into a fist.
The gunshot split the room, and Victor’s hand fell back to his side as Stell’s body toppled to the floor.
Victor took a deep breath, steadying himself.
And then he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. A page from the battered paperback, the lines blacked out except for five words.
Catch me if you can.
Victor left the door open behind him.
As he stepped out into the dark, he drew his phone from his pocket.
It was buzzing again, Sydney’s name a streak of white against the black backdrop. Victor switched the phone off, and let it slip from his fingers into the nearest trash can.
And then he turned his collar up, and walked away.
II
AFTER
OUTSIDE MERIT
SYDNEY pressed the phone to her ear, listened as the ringing gave way to silence, the automated voicemail, the long beep.