Page 104 of Victorious

But then a strange thing happened.

A second wave of pain. He hissed as something sharp tore through his skin, fresh blood welling from his knuckles as tiny shards of broken bone pushed up like jagged teeth, and fell, ringing, to the floor.

Eli watched in horror as his hand healed itself a second time, and then a third, his body overcompensating as it shed the broken pieces and made new ones, unable to stop healing. It hurt. But that wasn’t what bothered Eli most.

It was the wrongness of it. The perversion of his once-great power.

His ability to heal from any wound—a gift he’d once credited to God Himself—somehow degraded, polluted, corrupted.

By Gabriel Gray.

IINOW. THEN.

ELI sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing the knuckles on his right hand. After a few minutes, they’d finally stopped weeping blood and spitting bone, but the healing had left something else behind. Something Eli hadn’t formed in years.

A scar.

He had other scars, of course. The most glaring was the hatchwork on his back, the violent tapestry a testament to his father’s labors. But all of his scars predated his power. They belonged to a past life. He could trace every one to its root, its memory. But the thousand injuries he’d sustained in the intervening years—the product of his own efforts—had been absorbed, erased, a slate wiped clean.

Until now.

Eli traced the thin silver lines running along the back of his hand.

Tiny bits of bone jangled like coins inside his pocket. He wondered, if he broke something large enough, whether his body might cough up something he could use.

Someone cleared their throat, and Eli looked up to find an EON agent standing in his open door—the same door that had been taunting him for three days now. Eli frowned. He hadn’t heard the man coming. Hadn’t noticed him until he was already there.

“Follow me,” said the agent.

Eli didn’t. Instead, he took him in.

A man in his late thirties, with cropped blond hair and a soldier’s build, eyes hidden behind dark shades.

“Eli,” a voice—Gabriel’s voice—filled the room, projected from the speakers in the walls. “I want you to meet Noah.”

Eli’s mouth twitched at the symbolism. Another Bible name. But there was nothing biblical about this man. When he ducked his chin to glance over the dark glasses, Eli saw his eyes. Not brown, or blue, or gray, but a shifting swirl of color. Vivid. And unnatural.

ExtraOrdinary.

Eli rose, rolling his head on his shoulders.

Forty-seven. That was the number of EOs Eli Ever had dispatched over the years, returned to the earth, where they belonged. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. Each one, an atonement, for the sin of playing God. Each, an offering, a way to put his power—profane as it was—to righteous use.

If Noah stepped into the cell, he’d make it forty-eight.

But the agent didn’t. He stood, just across the threshold, with the smugness of a kid at the zoo, certain the barricade will keep him safe from the lions.

“Noah will bring you to my office,” instructed Gabriel. “Please go with him.”

Eli crossed the room, for once more than willing to obey, and when he reached the doorway, he met no resistance. The invisible force that had kept him there the last three days was gone. Eli smiled.

Gabriel had replaced one command—Stay in your room—with another—Go with Noah. In this case, the two were contradictory, and so one negated the other. He wondered what would happen if the commands weren’t contradictory. If the old ones would retain their strength, or weaken in the face of new commands, and need to be renewed.

As Eli stepped out of the cell, he wondered how many commands Gabriel could wield at once. Wondered if the doctor even knew, or if he assumed that his power was absolute.

But Eli had faced enough EOs to know that no power was absolute.

He’d once killed a girl whose sight could burn.