Page 138 of Victorious

XIXNOW. THEN.BACK IN THE VAN

MITCH hissed in pain as the cuffs shocked him again. And again.

It was like a game of Operation, except no matter how carefully he maneuvered the knife, the cuffs kept zapping him, and since insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, he gave up on the method after the third try.

He struggled to his feet, crouching to avoid the roof, and nearly tipped over as his vision blurred. When it came back into focus, he saw the camera affixed to the upper right corner, the black eye tilted toward him. But judging by the lack of voices, or doors, they weren’t watching. Still, to be safe, he reached up, and ripped the device out of the ceiling, exposing the wires behind. He licked his thumb and reached his bound hands up to test the connection, eliciting a tiny spark. It was hot.

He’d tried, between the first and second attempts, to wedge the fabric of his sleeves between his wrists and the cuffs, a makeshift buffer, but it was no use. They were locked so tight the metal was flush against his skin.

One way or another, he knew this was going to hurt.

Holding his breath, he lifted the cuffs to the hot wire, hoping to fry the circuitry inside.

A jolt of electricity shot through him, and for a second his muscles locked, and his vision dappled. But when it came back, a thin line of smoke was rising from the cuffs.

They didn’t snap open and fall away, which would have been immensely satisfying. But when he tried the knife again, they didn’t shock him, either. He would have done a fist pump if his hands weren’t still locked together. Instead, he got to work, painfully aware of every passing minute. He didn’t know how much time he’d lost, only that it was taking too long. When the cuffs finally hit the van floor, he sagged, doubled over in relief.

And then he heard the noise.

The van walls were thick enough to muffle almost everything, but something struck the side of it. A hollow sound that could have been a body, or a bullet, or a fist rapping on the side of the van. Either way, someone was coming. The door gave a dull metallic thunk as a bolt was slid free, and Mitch gripped the manacles like the world’s least efficient set of brass knuckles, bracing for a fight as the doors swung open.

A man stood, silhouetted by the pre-dawn light, which traced his edges, the outline of his sharp shoulders and short, fair hair, the gun hanging from one hand.

For a second, Mitch tensed, certain it was Noah, come to finish what he’d started. But then his eyes adjusted and the man’s face came into focus. Mitch stared in disbelief. He didn’t know what to say, so all that came out was a name, the end turned up into a question.

“Victor?”

6BREAKTHROUGH

INOW. THEN.

6 MONTHS BEFORE THE END

LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

DANIELA Dean was good at multitasking.

As her hand scrawled out a formula on the digital white board, and her mouth rattled off an explanation about carbon bonds, her mind was turning over a journal article she’d read that morning, picking apart the data, finding the holes, constructing the experiment she’d run to prove it wrong. At some point, her hand stopped, and her mouth stopped, and she forced her attention back to the classroom to finish the same lecture she’d already given five times in the three years she’d been stuck teaching sophomores.

Dani turned from the board and toward the sea of faces. A few seemed to understand, their brows furrowed in thought, but most landed somewhere on the spectrum from terror to confusion. Par for the course when it came to organic chemistry.

“Any questions?” she asked, but she’d timed the words well.

Before any hands could go up, the bell rang throughout the auditorium and the students surged up in a wave, most as eager to escape as she was. She slid her notes back in her bag and started for the door.

Three years ago, Dani had been on track to be the first Black female chemist at the country’s most prestigious lab. A fact her parents frequently brought up when talk turned to the subject of work.

What happened? asked her mother.

What happened? asked her friends.

What happened? when what they meant to say was What did you do to screw that up?

“Professor?” called a student, trailing after her. There were sixty-eight students in her current block. It was pointless trying to learn their names. Even at a school as good as Lockland, half of them would drop over the course of the semester—it was only a question of when.

Pre-med sounded like a great idea until you had to learn organic chemistry.

“Could I ask a question?” pressed the student. Dani tugged the tie out of her hair, shook out her black curls, then began to scrape them back again.