Page 129 of Victorious

EON’s drone had picked up two heat signatures. But when Sydney Clarke had fallen through the ice, her temperature had fallen, too. And unlike the rest of her, it had never fully come back up.

“I told you we should have split up,” said Eli as the squatters on the ground began to cry, their pleas muffled by the tape. Two agents stood over them, visors down and weapons drawn. The rest had stayed with the vans, one of which was parked outside, the other back at the motel, with Mitchell Turner.

“In case it wasn’t clear,” said Noah, “I don’t trust you. And neither does Dr. Gray.”

“And yet,” said Eli, crossing to a shuttered storefront, “of the three of us, I’m the one who’s spent his whole life hunting EOs.” In a dark window display, he turned his head, studying the fresh scars that circled his throat. He was going to kill that dog for good.

Once he was done with Sydney.

“So if you want to find the girl,” he went on, “perhaps it’s time for me to lead.”

He caught Noah’s face in the reflection and smiled as he said it, and the next thing he knew, the EO was surging toward him. Eli turned, too late. Noah slammed him back into the window, glass splintering behind his shoulders.

“If you know something,” snarled the EO, close enough for Eli to meet his ruined eyes. Close enough for him to draw the hunting knife from Noah’s belt, and press the blade against the EO’s side, where the armor’s seam was weak enough to pierce.

He wanted to drive the blade in, but he couldn’t. He tried, but his hand refused, fingers trembling against the invisible, impassable weight of Gabriel’s orders.

Judging by the frustrated look on Noah’s face, he felt the same resistance. He shoved away from Eli, who brushed a few shards of glass from his shoulder, and touched the comm in his left ear.

“Send the drone back up,” he told the agent with the van.

Noah moved to go, then stopped and turned back, holding out his hand. “Give me back my knife.”

Eli considered the weapon in his hand. He smiled, and then threw it. The blade sailed across the food court. “Fetch,” he said, as it buried itself in a sagging wooden sign.

Hatred burned through Noah’s face. “Were you always an asshole?” he asked. “Or did you just turn into one?”

Eli shrugged, and Noah marched off toward his weapon. As he pried the blade from the wood, and drove it back into his sheath, the agent outside answered on the comm. “We’ve got a single heat signature.”

“Where?” demanded Noah.

“The amusement park.”

“Perfect,” said Eli, heading for the nearest exit.

“No,” Noah cut in. “We’re looking for two, not one.”

Eli held up a hand and continued addressing the agent. “Is there any other sign of life nearby?” The line went quiet as they searched, and Eli nodded toward the teenage squatters.

“What about them?”

He’d killed his share of innocents over the years, collateral damage on the road to reaping EOs. He got not pleasure out of it, but Noah clearly wanted to take his anger out on someone because instead of giving the order, he drew his own gun, and fired. Two shots rang out in the food court, the retort still echoing through the empty mall when the agent came back in his ear.

“There’s something out there, but it’s too cold to register as human.”

Eli rolled his neck as he started toward the van. “That’s because she’s not.”

XIIINOW. THEN.MEANWHILE, BACK AT EON …

GABRIEL stood at Malcolm’s shoulder, watching everything.

He spun the pencil between his fingers as he scanned the bay of screens—van surveillance, drone views, and live feeds from the helmets of the agents in the field. Of the last, two had gone dark. The signals themselves hadn’t been lost, but the agents were dead, body cameras facing down on pavement, or up on empty night.

Another screen showed Mitchell Turner, unconscious on a van floor.

On several others, the scene between Noah and Eli at the mall played out, pieced together by their own cameras, and those on the remaining agents.

And there, in the bottom right screen, a grainy still of a small blond girl stared out at him, the image captured from a camera affixed to Eli’s vest.