Page 130 of Victorious

She looked so young, her blue eyes wide with genuine fear. Just when he thought he understood all EOs had to teach him, along came Sydney Clarke. At first, her existence had come as an unwelcome surprise. A piece at odds with the rest of the puzzle he’d constructed.

But now Gabriel saw Sydney’s arrival for what it was: an opportunity.

A chance to study another EO with a power like his own. Like, but not identical. Eli was wrong about that. Abilities were like fingerprints. At a distance, patterns might appear the same, but up close, each was different.

For example, Sydney Clarke couldn’t control the people she brought back.

At the same time, she had just resurrected a whole person from a handful of charred bones, and her sister had not only survived without a debilitating glitch, but she seemed even stronger.

He’d have liked to add the elder Clarke sister to the program, too, but given the sheer scale of her power, both original and evolving, Gabriel decided it wasn’t worth the risk of resurrecting her a third and final time.

She would serve another purpose.

Helena appeared behind him. “Reinforcements are on their way to the park.”

Gabriel nodded, watching as Eli climbed into one van, Noah into another.

He’d watched the scuffle in the mall, though there’d been no need to intervene.

That there was tension between the two EOs came as no surprise.

One was a dedicated soldier who valued loyalty, cooperation, and the other was a self-righteous killer who worked alone. It was a fascinating case study of nature versus nurture. Or in this case, nature versus conditioning.

Gabriel popped a pill into his mouth and swallowed it dry, the headache, once a sign of overreaching, now a dull but throbbing constant.

It had been months, and somehow, Eli hadn’t yielded. He was still pushing back against Gabriel’s control, a petulant child, testing parental rules. The gun, for instance. The one he’d taken off the roof. Gabriel had watched him lift it. Had considered telling Eli to put it back, but he wanted to see what he would do. A risk, of course, but not a great one, given that a single word from Gabriel would stop him.

The vans drew up to the amusement park.

An hour until dawn, and the place was still little more than layered shades of black beyond the headlights. Eli and Noah stepped out of their respective vans. Noah cracked his neck. Eli rolled his shoulder. Two fighters, ready to step into the ring, not against each other, but together, against Sydney and Serena.

The latter’s power made him think of Paul.

Paul, who marked the end of Gabriel’s old life, and the beginning of his new one. Paul, who could turn nightmares into realities. According to Eli, Serena’s power had its own dreamlike quality. It wasn’t real, in the strict sense of the word, but in his many years of counseling, he’d learned that line was porous. Reality was less a matter of objective truth, and more subjective experience. Looking at the fallen agents’ feeds, he saw only the roof, the place it ended, but they’d all walked over the edge as if it weren’t there. And to them, it hadn’t been.

According to the two who’d survived the fall, they’d both seen nothing. Not nothing, as in nothing unusual, but nothing, as in nothing. A sudden, surrounding void that left them with no sense of up or down, front or back.

Eli, by contrast, found himself inside a memory of his college years. He wasn’t forthcoming, and Gabriel didn’t press. There would be time to mine for details later. Right now, he needed Eli focused on the task at hand.

But he’d heard enough to glean that the memory was pleasant. An intentional aspect, if he had to guess, designed to placate and subdue him.

Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder where and when he’d find himself if he fell under Serena’s power. Wondered if Iris and Ian would be there, happy and alive in the color-soaked apartment, his son’s drawings on the table, his toys on the floor, his wife, humming as she painted the cabinets green, yellow, brick red, bl—

His attention was drawn back to the screens.

Eli and Noah were bickering again.

“—wait for reinforcements,” Noah was saying. “The park is large and there are four ways in and out. We can’t pursue the targets, cover every exit, and leave someone with Turner if—”

“We can if you stay here,” said Eli, starting toward the nearest gate.

Noah blocked his way. “Stand down.”

“Touch me, and I’ll break your hand.” Eli’s gaze dropped from Noah’s face to the body camera, looking straight at Gabriel. “I know Serena. We were on the same side once. She trusts me. I can get close enough to take them both down. He can’t.”

Gabriel turned the pencil once, twice. Then made a decision. “Noah,” he said. “Let Eli take the lead.”

The soldier’s jaw clenched. At the same time, Gabriel felt the slightest pressure, the closest Noah ever came to pushing back. But he was used to taking orders, even when he disagreed with them.