XXVII

TEN YEARS AGO

LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

Victor hoisted himself up onto his windowsill, thankful that he’d left it cracked, and that they lived on the first floor and thus he was only forced to contend with the five steps’ worth of height leading from the street up to the building’s entrance. He paused on the sill, straddling it as morning light seeped into everything around him, and listened for sounds within the apartment. The place was quiet, but Victor knew Eli was home. He could feel him.

His heart fluttered gently with the thrill of what would happen next, but that was all it was, a flutter. No pounding panic. This new calm was becoming unsettling. Victor struggled to assess it. The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence. He knew it was a bad idea to break out of the cell, just as he knew what he was about to do was a bad idea. A worse idea. He could track his thoughts better now, marveled at the way they circled round to solutions that bypassed caution and favored the immediate, the violent, the rash, the way a crippled man favors his good leg. Victor’s mind had always been drawn to those solutions, but he had been impeded by an understanding of right and wrong, or at least what he knew others saw as right and wrong. But now, this... this was simple. Elegant.

He paused long enough to smooth his hair in the mirror, distressed by how grungy death and half a night in a cell had made him look. Then he met his own eyes—the new calm had made them a fraction paler—and his reflection smiled. It was a cold smile, a slightly foreign one, bordering on arrogant, but Victor didn’t mind. He rather liked that smile. It looked like something Eli would wear.

Victor stepped out of his room and made his way gingerly down the hall to the kitchen. On the table were a set of knives and a notebook, half a page filled with Eli’s tight script and dotted with blood. As for Eli himself, Victor could see him on the living room couch, head bowed forward in thought, or maybe prayer. Victor paused a moment to watch him. It seemed odd that Eli couldn’t sense Victor’s presence the way Victor sensed his. That was the problem with an inward ability like healing. Self-absorbed to the last, he thought as he took up a large knife and dragged its tip along the table, eliciting a high scratch.

Eli spun up from the couch in a fluid motion. “Vic.”

“I’m disappointed,” said Victor.

“What are you doing here?”

“You turned me in.”

“You killed Angie.” The words snagged slightly in Eli’s throat. Victor was surprised by the emotion in his friend’s voice.

“Did you love her?” he asked. “Or are you just mad I took something back?”

“She was a person, Victor, not a thing, and you murdered her.”

“It was an accident,” he said. “And it’s your fault, really. If you had just helped me...”

Eli ran his hands over his face. “How could you do this?”

“How could you?” asked Victor, lifting the knife fully from the table as he spoke. “You called the cops and you accused me of being an EO. I didn’t rat you out, you know. I could have.” He scratched his head with the tip of the knife. “Why would you tell them something so silly? Did you know they have special people who come in if there’s an EO suspected? Some guy named Stell. Did you know that?”

“You’ve lost it.” Eli sidestepped, keeping his back to the wall. “Put the knife down. It’s not like you can hurt me.”

Victor smiled at the challenge. A quick step forward, and Eli tried to step back on instinct but met the wall and Victor met him. The knife slid in. It was easier than he imagined. Like a vanishing act, one moment the metal glinted and the next it was gone, buried in Eli’s stomach to the hilt.

“You know what I figured out?” Victor leaned into him as he spoke. “Watching you in the street that night, picking the glass from your hand? You can’t heal yourself until I take the knife out.” He twisted it, and Eli groaned. His feet went out from under him and he began to slide down the wall, but Victor hoisted him up by the handle.

“I’m not even using my new trick yet,” he said. “It’s not as flashy as yours, but it’s rather effective. Want to see it?”

Victor didn’t wait for a response. The air buzzed around him. He didn’t worry about a dial. Up. That’s all he cared about. Up. Eli screamed, and the sound made Victor feel good. Not in a sun-is-out-and-life-is-wonderful way, of course, but in a punishing way. A controlling way. Eli had betrayed him. Eli deserved a little pain. He would heal. When this was over, he wouldn’t even have a scar. The least Victor could do was try to make an impression. Victor let go of the knife handle and watched Eli’s body collapse to the floor.

“A note for your thesis,” he said as his friend lay there, gasping. “You thought our powers were somehow a reflection of our nature. God playing with mirrors, but you’re wrong. It’s not about God. It’s about us. The way we think. The thought that’s strong enough to keep us alive. To bring us back. You want to know how I know?” He turned his attention to the table, looking for something new and sharp. “Because all I could think about when I was dying was the pain.” He cranked the dial up in his mind, and let the room fill with Eli’s screams. “And how badly I wanted to make it stop.”

Victor turned the dial down again, and heard Eli’s screams fade as he reached the table. He was looking over the various blades when the room exploded with noise. A very sudden, very loud noise. Drywall crumbled a foot away, and Victor turned back to find Eli clutching his stomach with one hand and a gun with the other. The knife was on the floor in a satisfying amount of blood, and Victor wondered with a scientific curiosity how long it would take Eli’s body to regenerate itself. Then the second shot rang out, much closer to Victor’s head, and he frowned.

“Do you even know how to use that?” he asked, thumbing a long, thin knife. Eli’s hands were shaking visibly around the gun’s grip.

“Angie is dead—” said Eli.

“Yes, I know—”

“...but so are you.” It wasn’t a threat. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not Victor. You’re something that’s crawled into his skin. A devil wearing him.”

“Ouch,” said Victor, and for some reason, the word made him laugh. He couldn’t stop laughing. Eli looked disgusted, and it made Victor want to stab him again. He felt behind him for the nearest knife, and watched Eli’s fingers tighten on the gun.

“You’re something else,” he said. “Victor died.”

“We died, Eli. And we both came back.”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Not entirely. Something’s wrong, missing, gone. Can’t you feel it? I can,” said Eli, and he actually sounded scared. Victor was disappointed. He’d hoped that maybe Eli felt it, too, this calm, but apparently he felt something else entirely.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Victor. He was willing to admit that he felt different. “But if I’m missing something, then so are you. Life is about compromises. Or did you think because you put yourself in God’s hands that He would make you all you were and more?”

“He did,” growled Eli, pulling the trigger.

This time he didn’t miss. Victor felt the impact, and looked down at the hole in his shirt, glad he’d bothered to turn his pain off. He touched the spot and his fingers came away red. Distantly, he knew this was a bad place to be shot.

Victor sighed, looking up. “That’s a little self-righteous, don’t you think?”

Eli took a step closer. The wound in his stomach had already healed, and the color was back in his face. Victor knew he needed to keep talking.

“Admit it,” he said, “you feel different, too. Death takes something with it. What did it take from you?”

Eli lifted the gun again. “My fear.”

Victor managed a dark smile. Eli’s hands were shaking, and his jaw was clenched. “I still see fear.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Eli. “I’m just sorry.”

He fired again. The force nudged Victor back a step. His fingers closed around the nearest knife and he swung, digging it into Eli’s outstretched arm. The gun clattered to the floor, and Eli lunged back to avoid another blow.

Victor meant to follow it up, but his vision blurred. Just for a moment. He blinked, desperate to refocus.

“You may be able to turn the pain off,” said Eli, “but you can’t stop the blood loss.”

Victor took a step forward but the room leaned. He braced himself against the table. There was a lot of blood on the floor. He wasn’t sure how much of it was his. When he looked up again, Eli was there. And then Victor was on the ground. He pushed himself to his hands and knees but couldn’t seem to force his body farther up. An arm buckled beneath his weight. His eyes unfocused again.

Eli was talking, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. And then he heard the gun scraping across the floor as it was lifted, cocked. Something hit him in the back, like a soft punch, and his body stopped listening. Darkness crept in at the edges of his sight, the kind he’d wanted so badly when the pain on the table had been too much.

A thick darkness.

He began to sink into it as he heard Eli moving around the room, talking into his phone, something about medical attention. He was twisting his voice to sound panicked, but his face, even the blur that was his expression, was calm, composed. Victor saw Eli’s shoes walk away before everything faded.