Page 185 of Victorious

Once upon a time, she let Eli convince her that all EOs were broken. Wrong. And maybe they weren’t, and maybe they were, but she wasn’t an EO anymore. She was something else. Something more.

She might even be a god.

XXXIINOW. THEN.

30 MINUTES BEFORE THE END

SYDNEY was drowning.

The cold water dragged at her body as she tried to swim back toward the surface of the lake. She struggled upward, limbs slow, and lungs starved, but she was running out of time. The ice she’d fallen through began to seal, cracks withdrawing faster than she could swim.

By the time her fingers met the surface, it was a solid ceiling, and instead of bursting up, and through, and out, her palms found only smooth, unbroken ice. Panic rippled through her as she pounded on the underside, the last of her air escaping in a sob, because no one would hear her. No one would find her. She would be trapped down here, in the frozen dark and—

A shadow moved, beyond the ice.

The figure knelt, fingers splayed, their hand twice the size of hers.

Mitch. Or maybe even Victor.

The ice cracked beneath their palm, splintered, broke, and then their hand was wrapping around hers, fingers tangled as they hauled her up, out of the water.

She coughed, and sputtered, relief melting into horror as she saw the dark hair, the dark eyes, the scar like teeth around his throat.

Eli smiled. “Caught you.”

Syd jerked forward out of sleep.

The lake was gone, and so was the amusement park, replaced by a room with warm light and soft green walls. She was curled in a chair, and her head felt full of cotton. A strange taste filled her mouth. Like sand and honey. Gritty, sweet.

Syd squinted, disoriented by the nightmare, and the normalcy of the green room, and the drug still in her system. The last thing she remembered—before the dream—was sprinting through the dark, toward Victor. The dull pain of the dart in her back, and Eli’s hand over her mouth, and—

“Welcome back.”

Sydney turned her head too fast, and dizziness washed over her, vision blurring. She squeezed her eyes shut till the feeling passed, and when she opened them again, she saw the man sitting in the other chair.

He was middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-frame glasses. Behind them, a pair of dark eyes focused on her, and nothing else. He was dressed nicely, in dark slacks and a white button-down, the sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows.

His posture was relaxed, one ankle resting on the other knee, and even in her groggy state, she could tell he was a therapist.

Sydney hated therapists.

As a kid, her mom and dad had sent her to a handful of them, in lieu of actual parenting, and the hospital had made her see one, after the accident. They were all nice, in the same robotic way. And they all treated her as if she were a template, not a person, but a small, malfunctioning machine. Something broken to be fixed.

This one had a notebook open in his lap, a yellow pencil rapping rhythmically against the page, as if they were in the middle of a session. As if she hadn’t been drugged and then delivered here.

“Hello, Sydney.”

Slowly, she uncoiled, twisting in the chair to face him. It was low enough that her toes, at least, touched the rug. “Who are you?”

He smiled, a shallow, automatic gesture. “My name is Dr. Gray,” he said, and she felt a small pang of vindication. “But you can call me Gabriel.”

“Where am I?” she asked even though she already suspected.

He looked around. “My office.”

Her gaze flicked past him to the door. A pane of frosted glass. “Where is your office?”

His mouth twitched. “EON.”