Page 189 of Victorious

It wasn’t that Serena didn’t love her. Serena didn’t love herself.

Syd was just what she’d always been: a mirror.

“I didn’t bring her back sooner, because I didn’t know what version of my sister I would get.”

“Is that why you changed her?”

Sydney’s head snapped up. “I didn’t—”

“You didn’t just resurrect your sister, Sydney. You reinvented her. You altered the scope and nature of her power.”

Syd blinked and saw the Brighton Commons house.

The dream she couldn’t wake up from, even when she knew it wasn’t real.

I make the world. And so, I make the rules.

The way the light shimmered when Serena was happy.

The way the walls trembled when she was mad.

I don’t need to get inside your head when I can hold you inside mine.

“How did you do it?” asked Dr. Gray, with hunger in his voice.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t care,” she snapped. “It’s the truth. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know how. I didn’t want to make her stronger.” She cursed at the crack in her voice. The splinter of fear. The knowledge Gray had heard it, too.

“You’re scared of her,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” said Syd. “You should be, too.”

“Oh, I am,” said Dr. Gray. “She’s too powerful. And too unstable to control it. Don’t get me wrong, I know why you brought Serena back. You were running. You were scared. But I think we can agree, in retrospect, it was a mistake. One you need to rectify.”

She stiffened. “What? How?” His gaze dropped to the ashes on the floor, and she almost laughed. “You want me to kill my sister?”

XXXIIINOW. THEN.

IN the Control room, Malcolm saw Serena coming.

Under normal circumstances, he would have put the building under lockdown.

He would have notified Dr. Gray of the impending attack and sent out an all-hands warning to every agent currently on premises.

He would have communicated a threat assessment, complete with a list of the approaching EO’s strengths and weaknesses, one he’d compiled in the hours since her capture and subsequent escape.

He would have deployed countermeasures to establish a perimeter of fifty meters, given the estimated reach of Serena’s ability, countermeasures that would have—with 92 percent confidence—been able to prevent her from nearing, let alone entering, the EON compound.

Malcolm would have done all this, but he couldn’t.

Because nine minutes earlier, he had ceded administrative privileges to the entire mainframe to Mitchell Turner, effectively locking himself out of the system he’d created and enforced.

So all he could do was watch as Serena drove the stolen blue sports car onto EON grounds.

As she stopped, and exited the vehicle, and approached the building.