Page 51 of Victorious

Gabriel took his seat again. “Well then,” he said, “your loss is my gain.”

Helena tapped the screen, and moments later, the office door slid open, and a woman stepped through.

She was tall—taller than Helena—and dressed in black tactical gear. She was broad shouldered and tan, with short dark hair, and she carried herself in a way that telegraphed ex-military.

“Director Roy?” she said, before her attention flicked toward Gabriel. She leveled him with such a piercing gaze, he wondered if her power involved a special kind of sight. It hadn’t occurred to him, until then, that someone might have the ability to see through what he’d been to what he was now.

But her face betrayed nothing.

“Agent Rios,” said Helena. “This is Dr. Gray.”

“Sir,” she said, holding out her hand.

He took it, the handshake firm, but brief. “Please, call me Gabriel,” he said. “Director Roy told me you’re a field agent.”

Rios nodded. “I lead a team in the pursuit and capture of EOs.”

“Agent Rios,” said Helena. “Dr. Gray would like to ask you a few questions. But first, would you be willing to demonstrate your ability?”

Despite the wording, it was clearly a command.

Rios, to her credit, hesitated only for an instant. The time it took to look from the stranger to her boss and back again. Then she turned on her heel and left the office. Not through the door, but through the wall, passing straight through as if it were a curtain.

It was the third power Gabriel had witnessed, including his own, and part of his mind still struggled to comprehend it.

A moment later, Rios returned. The only difference was that she now held a small blue wildflower in one hand.

“They grow in the field behind the building,” she explained, offering the bud to Gabriel. She kept her chin up, as she spoke, a small gesture of defiance. No, not defiance, he amended. Pride. She was proud of her power. How easily she wielded it.

“Impressive,” he said, sliding the flower between the pages of his notebook.

“Tell me about your work,” he said, leaning back against his chair. His fingers drifted to his cuffs as he spoke, slipping the buttons free. “How do others at EON feel about your situation?”

“Sir?”

“Gabriel,” he corrected gently, rolling up his sleeves. “Your fellow field agents, do they know?”

Rios nodded tightly. “My own team does.”

“So it’s not general knowledge. The guards that staff the facility don’t know.”

Rios answered with a curt shake of her head.

“That must be hard,” he mused. “Knowing how they feel about EOs. The fact they put people like you in cages.”

Her expression hardened. “The people imprisoned at EON are not like me.”

Fascinating, thought Gabriel. And unsurprising. Soldiers were trained to draw mental lines between themselves and their enemies. Us versus Them.

“They’re not?” he pressed, gesturing to the wall. “So the EOs in those cells deserve to be there, and you don’t?”

“I can’t speak for all of them. Only myself.”

“But you helped put them there.”

She frowned, defensiveness creeping into her posture. “It’s my job.”

“And how did you come to have this job?” he asked.