Page 108 of Victorious

Gabriel explained it wasn’t that they couldn’t find him. It was that they found him everywhere. Someone had coded him into the surveillance, creating false leads, dead ends, booby traps.

“Mitchell Turner,” muttered Eli, recalling the troublesome cellmate.

Gabriel’s voice drew him back. “You were saying that you two had a theory.” He held out his hand as he spoke, a silent command to hand the tablet back. Eli hesitated, reluctant to give up this one advantage, a connection to the system and the world beyond. But it would gain him nothing without the freedom to act.

Still, he held on to it a moment longer, just to prove he could.

“Cognitive emphasis,” he said, finally surrendering the device, which vanished into the chair at Gabriel’s side. “The idea that under extreme duress, the necessary circumstances for an EO’s power to emerge, the subject’s determination played a part.”

“Mind over body?” ventured Gabriel.

“Perhaps not over, but equal to,” said Eli. “Victor cared more about the act of resurrection. I cared about what came with it.”

The therapist rapped his pencil on his knee. Eli had yet to see him actually write, but the implement was always in his hand.

“You manifested your ability,” he said, sounding impressed.

Eli crinkled his nose. “I went into that ice bath knowing what I wanted. I told myself, every second as my temperature fell. As my heart rate slowed. As the pain became numbness and the numbness became dark. I wanted to be unstoppable. Unbreakable. Unkillable. I held on to it like a rope.”

“And it worked.”

Eli’s mouth twitched. “And it worked.” He flexed his fingers. “Until you. Until now.”

Gabriel sat back. “Glitches are inevitable. They’ve presented in every single EO I’ve brought back. Trust me when I say, yours could be far worse.”

Tell that to the bones I pulled out of my hand, thought Eli grimly. Or my rib, which is still growing spikes. He said nothing, but his expression must have given him away.

“Do you resent me for resurrecting you?” asked Gabriel.

“Yes.”

“Because I am an EO?”

Eli met his eyes. “No, Gabriel,” he said. “Because you’re not God.”

VNOW. THEN.

TIME went by, and somehow Eli Ever continued to resist.

Gabriel’s head ached dully all the time, his mind and body straining night and day from the constant tension on the invisible tether.

No one else had lasted half as long.

It was impressive—and exhausting.

Eli did as he was told, and only that, all the while clearly searching for any loophole, any opportunity he might exploit. Like a child, looking for ways to disobey a parent without breaking their rules.

But Gabriel persevered, because he saw the purpose, the potential.

“Why am I here?” asked Eli.

“Ah,” said Gabriel, “the universal question.”

“I mean, specifically,” snapped Eli. “I was dead. You brought me back. For what?”

Gabriel met his gaze. Considered lying but didn’t see the point. Not when the truth could bring them closer.

“Almost three years ago, an EO killed my family,” he said. “And nearly killed me.” The words were meant to catch Eli off guard. And they did. He straightened in his seat. “I know how dangerous they are. And I know the world would be safer without them. But they exist. And I am just trying to understand—who they were, what they become, and why. To make sense of it.”