Page 141 of Victorious

To her credit, Dani looked more insulted than confused, eyes hanging on Victor as she returned to her seat. As she sank into the chair, the first pangs of discomfort flickered in his chest.

Her gaze bored into him as he lifted the inhaler to his mouth and breathed in.

“Let’s start again,” he said, as his pain and his power both dropped away. He ejected the inhaler cartridge and set the vivid blue vial on the desk. “This is what I’m asking you to make. What I need you to teach me how to make,” he amended. “It’s a serum that, when inhaled, severs me from my abilities.”

Dani’s voice, when she spoke, was remarkably even. Only the slightest tremble as she asked, “Why would you want that?”

“I don’t,” said Victor bluntly. “But the alternative is worse.”

He then explained, as succinctly as he could, about the near-death experience in the lab here at Lockland, all those years ago, and his resulting ability to control pain through electrical currents. About his second resurrection, and the resulting glitch, and the choice that wasn’t really a choice, between impotence and death.

He could see the way Dani’s attention sharpened as he spoke, the cogs visible behind her eyes as she turned over the details of his predicament.

It was a calculated risk, so much transparency. Explaining what happened if he ran out of the compound was the same as pointing to the space between his second and third ribs, showing her exactly where to drive a knife. But in the wake of that dark night, between Eli’s goading and the gun, he realized, he had nothing left to lose.

“Victor?” Sydney’s voice, somewhere to his right.

His chin twitched toward it before he remembered, she wasn’t there. When he glanced back at the professor, she was studying the paper, as if committing it to memory. He sat forward to reclaim it, but her hand splayed across the page.

“How much do you have left?”

“Not enough.”

Her gaze flicked up. “And your plan is to keep ingesting this indefinitely?”

He shrugged. “Unless you have a better idea.”

A gauntlet, thrown.

He waited to see if she would pick it up.

She rapped her fingers on the desk. “Half the chemicals in this are highly toxic. And you’ve been taking it for, what, two and a half years? It’s a miracle you haven’t done more damage.”

Victor frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, any number of these could cause serious neurological impairment in small doses, let alone large ones. I’m amazed you still have all your faculties.”

In his mind, Eli stretched out on the sofa.

Sydney called out from the middle of the street.

Dol slunk by in the dark.

Not madness.

Simply side effects.

Dani was still talking. “I’m going to take the formula back down to studs. See if I can find a better solution.” He could hear the excitement in her voice. A bored mind, finally being offered a challenge. “I’ll need to run some tests.”

“On the compound?”

“On you.”

Victor stilled. He’d subjected himself to study once before, when the cycle of death and resurrection was first starting. He’d sought out a specialist, determined to find out why his body was electrocuting itself again, and again. And how to stop it. Instead of answers, he’d had a fatal heart attack inside the MRI, and the resulting EMP had fried the machine. And the doctor.

“How long until you need another dose?” she asked.

“Seven hours.” At first, it had been nearly twelve, but that window, like all of them, was shrinking.