Page 156 of Victorious

Victor shook his head. “Then what the fuck are you doing? ExtraOrdinaries aren’t real.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know there’s no scientific basis—” started Victor.

“There’s no scientific basis for anything,” Eli shot back, “not until someone discovers it.” His eyes were dark, his jaw set.

Victor had to admit, this was his favorite version of Eli. Not the charming quarterback who turned his smile on like a light. This. The hungry one only he could draw out.

Eli swiped his pint from the table. “You should be thanking me, Vic. If I fail as spectacularly as you seem to think I will, top of class is yours.”

“I want to beat you because I’m better,” said Victor, reaching for his own beer. “Not because you’re crazy.”

As his hand tightened on the bottle, Victor winced. He didn’t feel the glass give way, but something sharp cut into his palm. As it did, the bar around him flickered. He might have mistaken it for a power outage, but Eli and the table flickered, too—there, and gone—and in the bar’s place, dawn light and looming rides.

He was back in the amusement park.

Victor frowned, unsure what had just happened.

He was no longer standing on the path, but in the twisted metal underbelly of a ride. Beams crisscrossed around him, a latticework of scaffolding. His hand, no longer gripping a beer but a jagged metal pole, the edge cutting into his palm. Blood trickled down his wrist.

He let go, dulling his own pain on instinct. A mistake. The moment he did, the park vanished again, instantly subsumed by the spell.

Eli. The bar. His thoughts, already slipping. The instant before he lost himself again, Victor ratcheted his pain back up, sharp enough to banish the illusion. Put him back on solid ground. He left the dials turned up, nerves alight to keep himself from being dragged back into—what?

What the fuck was that?

Not one of his usual hallucinations, which grazed his perception of reality, but a full-blown delirium. A dream. And like a dream, once inside, he’d forgotten everything beyond it. Forgotten what was real, and what wasn’t. All sense of time and place, consumed by the illusion. The question was how. Or rather, who.

It had the telltale markings of an EO’s power.

“Vic, do you hear me?” Mitch’s voice burst through the comm, strained with worry.

He fought to focus through the pain. “Something’s wrong,” he said, which fell short of an explanation, but it was all he could manage. Around him, the light in the amusement park had brightened slightly, the only clue to how long he’d been gone.

Pain kept the dream itself from closing back around him, but it didn’t banish the power’s presence. He could see the amusement park, but moving through it was harder. The air was thick, his limbs weighted in a way that reminded him of Dominic. The shadow world he could step into, dislocated from time, but not space. How heavy it was there, how hard to move.

And then suddenly, it fell away.

Sloughed off, the world returning to its ordinary, solid state.

Testing, Victor inched the dials on his pain back down, bracing for the dream to rush back in. When reality held, he let his nerves return to normal, limbs sagging in relief. He felt the tightness in his chest before he banished it and—

“You’ve got trouble.”

Mitch sounded out of breath. Victor didn’t have time to wonder why. Movement flickered at the edge of his sight, and he turned in time to see the agent coming toward him.

One figure, in black tactical gear, helmet on and visor down.

“Victor Vale,” they said, “put your hands—”

Victor didn’t hesitate. He reached out, took hold of the agent’s nerves, and pulled.

They should have buckled, screaming, fallen to their knees in pain. Instead, they lurched, and then recovered, gun swinging up to shoot. Victor dodged at the last second and the shot pinged off the scaffolding. Not a bullet. A dart.

They were trying to take him alive.

That was a mistake.