Page 13 of Victorious

As if the rules that governed reality hadn’t given way, science’s understanding of the human mind and its potential shattering to reveal a new, uncharted world.

One just waiting for Dr. Gabriel Gray.

VNOW. THEN.

1 WEEK BEFORE THE END

SEVERAL STATES AWAY

THE axe whistled as it fell.

The wood split and tumbled off the block, and Mitchell Turner tossed the logs onto the growing pile. He set the next piece on the stump, and lifted the axe again, fingers flexing on the handle.

Mitch had spent most of his life trying not to break things.

He hadn’t always succeeded—the scars on his knuckles were proof of that—but this was different.

It left his body sore in a pleasant way. The kind of ache that came not from being hurt, simply used. A welcome sort of pain. Not the kind Vic would need to take away.

If he were here.

Mitch brought the axe down again, eliciting a crack like a peal of thunder as the blade split the wood and buried itself half an inch in the block beneath. He gathered half a dozen logs and set off toward the little red cabin.

The cabin—it was the latest in a string of lodgings collected and abandoned over the last three years, some lasting months, others only weeks. This one had held for almost a year. Long enough to watch the seasons change, the woods behind the house going from bare to green to gold to bare again. Today, the air smelled like snow, and Mitch couldn’t believe he’d gone thirty years without knowing that scent. The way it mingled with the sap on the split logs and the woodsmoke.

“Syd?” he called, knocking the dirt off his boots at the door.

When she didn’t answer, the peace he’d felt outside began to falter. He dropped the wood onto the rug.

“Sydney?” he called again, a twinge of fear kicking off behind his ribs.

Every day since the girl had walked into his life, nearly a decade before, some part of Mitchell Turner had been waiting for the world—his world—to fall apart. He knew that good things were only borrowed, never owned, and it was only a matter of time before the scales tipped out of Mitch’s favor and—

And then he rounded the corner and saw her.

Sydney Clarke was sitting at the wooden kitchen table, blond head bent over a textbook and music blasting in her ears, a large black shape curled like a shadow under her chair.

Mitch sagged in relief, and then annoyance.

Syd had the music cranked up so loud that he would have been able to hear the lyrics, if there were any (as far as he could tell, the voice was just one long, protracted wail). Mitch preferred the classics, the crooners, but Syd had a penchant for something called “death metal.”

He tapped the side of her headphones, expecting the kid to jump. She didn’t, just sighed and slung them around her neck, one pale brow arched in an expression at odds with her young face.

“We’ve talked about this,” he said. “Keep the decibels down when I’m not in the house. If there’s trouble, you need to be able to hear it.”

Sydney shrugged. “Dol would let me know.”

As if on cue, the shape beneath the table stirred, and straightened, coalescing into a massive black dog. He yawned, and rested his head in Sydney’s lap, where she began to stroke his ears.

“Good boy,” she murmured.

Dol’s tail thumped lightly. Mitch had done the math. The dog should have been a bag of bones by now, but aside from a bit of white on his muzzle and around his eyes, he seemed untouched by time, or at least, unscathed. Which might have had something to do with the fact Sydney had brought the dog back from the dead.

Twice.

Mitch glanced down at the textbook she was marking up. Tensed when he saw she wasn’t just highlighting the useful passages. She was blacking out the rest. Like Victor used to. Only, instead of a poem, all that remained were words like carbon-containing compounds, and agrichemicals, and delocalized electrons.

Mitch didn’t comment on the destruction. Or the parallels. Or the fact it was a library book.