Vengeful

“Corporal Rios.”

She looked up, saw a man standing in the doorway. He had salt-and-pepper hair, and tired eyes. “I’m the director of this facility,” he said. “My name is Joseph Stell.”

Rios struggled to sit up.

They’d bound her ribs so tight it still felt like there was a building weighing down on her.

“Please,” said Stell. “Don’t strain yourself.” He glanced around, but there were no visitors’ chairs, so he ended up hovering next to the bed. “You’re lucky to be alive, soldier.”

“That’s what they keep saying.”

He gave her a knowing glance. “You think it’s more than luck?”

Rios didn’t answer. There was something weighted about the question. He wasn’t just making small talk. He knew. What she’d said to her superior, what she’d shown him.

“Do you know where you are?” pressed Stell.

“I know this isn’t a normal hospital,” said Rios. Stell didn’t deny it.

He simply nodded, looked around. “This is a place for people like you.”

“For soldiers?”

“For EOs.”

He said the word like it was supposed to mean something. It didn’t. Her confusion must have registered, because he went on.

“Power is a weapon, Corporal. You know how dangerous those can be. It’s my job to make sure these kinds of weapons don’t hurt anyone.”

Rios shook her head. “Look, I was just doing my job. I don’t know what happened back there—what happened to me—but I’m glad it did. It saved my life. It made me stronger. So send me back, and let me—”

“I can’t do that,” cut in Stell.

“Do you intend to keep me here?” she demanded.

“I don’t know if we could,” he admitted. “More importantly, I don’t know if we need to. I’m hoping, Corporal Rios, that you and I can reach an agreement. This is rather uncharted territory. You see, you’re the first EO who’s ever turned themselves in.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Most people in your position choose to run.”

“Why?” asked Rios. “I’m not a criminal.” She straightened, despite the pain. “I’ve spent my whole life running toward the fight. And now I’m just supposed to stop? To surrender? Because I survived? No. I don’t think so.”

To her surprise, Stell smiled. “You’re right. Your talent makes you stronger. It makes you . . . equipped to face a different degree of danger. If you still want to serve your country—”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” cut in Rios.

“Then perhaps,” said Stell, “there is a way you can.”

June hummed as her fingers slid over the keyboard.

She had to hand it to EON. They had a very user-friendly system, and half a minute later she’d found the file she needed. It had been labeled alias: june. She skimmed through, curious to see what they’d found—which wasn’t much. But still enough to merit the trip.

“Good-bye,” she whispered, erasing the file—and herself—from the system.

June went out the way she’d come in.

Retraced her steps down the hall, past security and the gates, back to the waiting black coupe. June opened the car door, and by the time she climbed behind the wheel, she was herself again.

Not the leggy brunette, or the thin teen, or any of the dozen faces she’d recently worn, but a spritely girl, with strawberry curls and a splash of freckles across her high cheeks.

June let herself sit in that body for a moment, breathe with her own lungs, see with her own eyes. Just to remember what it felt like. And then she reached out and started the engine, sliding into something safer. The kind of person you wouldn’t look twice at. The kind who gets lost in the crowd.

June glanced in the rearview mirror, checked her new face, and drove away.

Syd shoved the burner phone back in her pocket. She heard the car door open, Mitch’s heavy steps in the grass as he approached.

“Hey, kid,” he said. His voice was so gentle, as if afraid of telling her the truth. But Syd already knew—Victor was gone. She stared at the distant skyline of Merit, shoved her hands in her coat, felt her sister’s bones in one pocket, the gun in the other.

“It’s time to go,” she said, returning to the car.

Mitch turned on the engine, pulled back onto the highway. The road stretched ahead, flat and even and endless, almost like the surface of a frozen lake at night.

Sydney resisted the urge to look back again.

Victor might be gone, but there was still that thread, tangling their lives. It had led Sydney to him once before, and it would lead her there again.

No matter how long or far she had to look.

Sooner or later, she would find him.

If Sydney had anything, it was time.

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 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.

“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.

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.”

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.

“It always comes down to this, doesn’t it?” said Eli. “To us. To what we did—”

Victor was very aware of the knife in Eli’s hands, the absence of any weapon in his own. His eyes went to the tray of tools, more scalpels, a bone saw, a clamp.

Eli put a shoe up on Haverty’s back and pushed the doctor’s body over.

“That man can burn in hell.” His dark eyes drifted up. “Victor.” A pause. “You were supposed to stay dead.”

“It didn’t take.”

A grim smile crossed Eli’s face. “I have to say, you don’t look well.” His fingers tightened on the scalpel. “But don’t worry, I’ll put you out of your—”

Victor lunged for the tray of instruments, but Eli knocked it sideways.

Tools scattered across the floor, but before Victor could reach any of them Eli caught him around the middle, and they went down hard, Eli’s scalpel driving down toward Victor’s injured shoulder. He knocked Eli’s arm off course at the last instant and the blade scraped against concrete, drawing sparks.

With Eli unable to heal and Victor unable to hurt—they were finally on equal ground.

Which wasn’t equal at all.

Eli was still built like a twenty-two-year-old quarterback.

Victor was a gaunt thirty-five, and dying.