Page 157 of Victorious

Victor drew his gun and fired at the agent’s head. The bullet ricocheted off the helmet, leaving the visor scraped but otherwise intact. He dropped the sight and fired two more shots into the center of their chest. Even with the armored vest, it should have hurt enough to slow the agent down.

It didn’t.

They kept coming. Before they could shoot at him again, Victor took control of their arm, forced their hand to drop the tranquilizer gun. He caused their legs to lock up, pinning them in place. They fought. He held. Or tried. Controlling a body was more nuanced than causing it pain, but it was still part of the same power. The current running through the nerves, the nerves animating the body. But as he tried to hold it, the charge felt like it was faltering. The current felt uneven, the nerves slipping in his grip.

In short, they weren’t behaving like a body should.

It took half of Victor’s strength just to hold them still while he walked toward them, flicking the visor up. What he found was ordinary. Human. Save for the flatness of their expression under such duress. The lack of terror in their eyes.

“What are you?” he asked, searching the agent’s face for answers.

Finding none, he put the gun between their eyes, and fired, the current dying as they fell.

He didn’t feel the others coming. Their bodies had that same slippery charge, their nerves dipping in and out of reach. But he heard their boots on broken earth, and turned to find three more agents, each approaching from a different side.

Victor didn’t have time for this.

He reached out, and instead of bothering with dials, he simply drove his power into them with sheer blunt force, blowing every fuse. All at once, the agents buckled, slumping toward the ground.

Victor swayed. He threw out a hand and braced himself against the nearest post, the telltale ache taking shape behind his ribs. Dani’s voice echoed through his head.

Pain is the body’s way of warning us to stop.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, fingers curling around the disc, but before he could draw it out, the three agents twitched, and began to get up.

“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Victor, as they all got back to their feet.

XVNOW. THEN.

THE theme park house was full of doors, but none of them led out.

One of them had to, but so far, Sydney hadn’t found it.

Of the four she’d tried, three had led back onto other halls, while the fourth had led nowhere. Now she sent up a desperate prayer and threw her weight against a fifth. Nearly crumpled in relief when it swung open onto cold morning air and a set of rickety steps at the back of the ride. Steps that led out into the park. She scrambled down, hit the ground, and took off, not down the nearest path, but across it, weaving between rides and stalls as light spread across the sky.

She had no idea where she was, or where she was going, beyond away, beyond out, but her body seemed to know something her brain did not, legs carrying her with strange momentum, as if running downhill.

She didn’t hear a second set of boots, but that didn’t mean they weren’t behind her.

Don’t look back, she thought. Don’t slow down.

Her shoes pounded on the pavement as she cut across a carousel, ducked between the painted wooden horses.

That was when she saw him.

This far away, he was little more than an outline, a lean shadow surrounded by agents in black gear. She couldn’t see his face, but his white-blond hair burned like a flame in the dark beneath a ride.

Victor.

Victor was here.

He was here.

She didn’t know how, she didn’t care, all that mattered was that he’d come back. For her.

Sydney took off at a dead sprint, running toward him the way she had eight years ago, when she was scared, and he was safe, but the pull was even stronger now, with a force like gravity between them. That cord she’d made, the day she brought him back, drawn taut again.

She was about to call his name when something slammed into her back.