Page 155 of Victorious

Her first thought was No.

Her second was Eli.

Somehow, he must have gotten free, gotten Syd’s gun, gotten—

But then she reached the rail and saw Eli still standing, frozen, in his shell of ice. Saw Serena sway, a red dart jutting from her neck. Saw the stranger—the same one from outside the cabin—step out of thin air, the gun still in his hand.

Three things happened all at once.

Serena collapsed, and as she did, so did the dream, the house in Brighton Commons dropping like a curtain, plunging Sydney suddenly back into the real world. Into the darkened shack in the abandoned park. The layout was different, but there was a second floor, little more than a platform, and she was standing on it, exposed, inches from the edge, a ten-foot drop. She lunged back, and as she did, the boards creaked beneath her shoes. The EO’s head jerked up, his weapon swinging with it, and Sydney ducked a breath before the gun went off, a dart burying itself in the wall above her head.

And she did the only thing she could.

She ran.

XIIINOW. THEN.

THE moment Serena’s illusion shattered, so did the ice surrounding Eli.

The frozen tomb around him crumbled, and the real world came rushing back, the sisters’ well-lit house replaced by Madman’s Mansion, darkened rooms and clapboard walls and warping floors, the boards shot through with early morning light.

Eli staggered and gasped, lungs hitching as they finally found air. Sank to one knee, and let out a guttural sound, blood dripping from his nose, his eyes, his ears.

Once, when he first started hunting EOs, Eli had been shot in the head.

It hadn’t killed him, of course, but it had hurt like hell, the bullet lodging an inch or so inside his skull. His body couldn’t heal around the metal mass, and couldn’t force it out. It had taken a pair of needle-nose pliers and the better part of ten minutes for Eli to dig the bullet from his head, and every agonizing second had felt like an hour, a lifetime.

It paled compared to this.

He retched blood onto the floor, head ringing like a bell as Noah’s voice played in the room and in his ear. “Target B acquired. In pursuit of Target A.”

Eli spat, and forced his body upright, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of one hand and drawing his gun with the other as a wisp of blond hair vanished overhead. Sydney.

“In pursuit,” he echoed.

Noah moved to block his way. “Where do you think you’re—”

But Eli wasn’t in the mood. He fired a single dart into the base of Noah’s throat. The EO looked down, affronted. “You fuckinnn’…” he said, voice already slurring as he reached up to rip it out. Too late. His hand fell back, one knee buckling as the drug took hold.

Eli stepped around his body.

“Noah’s staying with Serena,” he said into his comm as he took off up the stairs.

Sydney Clarke was his.

XIVNOW. THEN.

THE world shuddered, seemed to skip.

One moment Victor was sitting in the classroom, gripping the edge of his desk, and the next his hand was splayed over a different plane of wood, ink smudging his fingertips.

“Well, what do you think?”

He looked up. They were at the bar off campus, Eli across from him, his gaze guarded, searching. Their beers sat on the table between them, untouched.

“I think you’re either high or joking.”

Eli didn’t smile. “Wrong on both accounts.”