Page 69 of Victorious

The chemist was dead, and the kid was in the wind, which meant Victor was back where he’d started nine months ago. Caught in the same forsaken loop. Running out of the compound, and out of time.

Again.

“We’re sorry, the number you’re trying to reach…”

Victor squeezed the cell until the screen threatened to crack, the bones aching in his hand. Resisted the urge to fling the phone into the nearest wall.

Instead, he paced, and drank, and considered his options.

A list of other prospective chemists sat open on his laptop, filtered by location, background, specialty, access to ingredients. He could start again. Find someone else to make the formula, dispose of them as needed—hope no one noticed a pattern and—

And what?

He took a swig of scotch.

What was he doing, besides buying time?

This wasn’t a life. It was survival. Stasis.

Endurance with no end in sight.

Victor considered himself a patient man. Not by nature, but by practice.

Thanks to Stell’s suspicions after his arrest, he’d endured five years of solitary confinement and constant scrutiny, five more within the prison block at Wrighton. But there had always been a purpose to that patience. A means to an end. Every moment of every day, he’d fed himself with the promise of revenge.

A promise that sustained him, even in his darkest moments.

And then, after his second resurrection, Victor had been driven by another force. The need to crack the code, to fix what had been broken. All that work, only to learn there was no fixing it. That his only option was to either let death come, or live by poisoning his body. Rendering his power useless, his abilities ordinary, and his mind—his mind upon which he had always been able to rely—increasingly unreliable.

And even if Victor could stomach those shortcomings, even if he could accept a normal life—not that he had ever wanted one—there was no quarter there.

He was still a criminal, a murderer, a man on the run.

And in his current, well-diminished state, he could not fight against EON. Could not protect Sydney or Mitch. He was not a predator. He was prey. Fleeing. Hiding. Tethered to his need for a compound he could not make alone.

In short, he was trapped in a cycle.

And as far as he could tell, there was only one way out.

Victor sank into a chair.

In front of him, two objects sat waiting on the coffee table.

His inhaler.

And his gun.

He considered them both, the way one would a crossroads.

And for the first time, the choice did not strike him as obvious.

Somewhere between the first glass and second glass of whisky, the compound had worn off, and now his nerves were humming as his power came online. He checked his watch, even though the clock was already ticking in his head. He’d memorized the minutes, and so he knew, now was the time to choose. He could turn the dials down, shut off the pain. He would feel nothing when he pulled the trigger.

He set the whisky down, and leaned forward, fingers grazing the table’s edge as a dry laugh rolled through the room.

Victor looked up, and saw Eli, arms stretched along the back of the sofa, dark hair curling against his cheeks.

“Unbelievable,” he drawled, one corner of his mouth quirking in amusement. “The incomparable Victor Vale, who clawed his way back from death not once, but twice, is thinking of ending things.”