Page 193 of Victorious

A detail Gabriel kept close at hand as he continued down the hall. He found several agents blindly wandering, rendered useless by Serena’s fog. He tried to wrest them back, will them into doing as he said, to no effect. Right now, they were lost to him.

They might as well be dead.

He freed a tablet from an agent’s hand and ordered Control to lock the building down. Was annoyed but unsurprised when no one answered. Using the device to scan the cameras, he located Sydney and Serena, and he was about to head toward them when something flashed across the screen.

One of the external, motion-activated cameras showed a red pickup driving through the gates. Change of plans, thought Gabriel.

He drew a knife from the agent’s belt and went to find Eli.

XXXVINOW. THEN.

MOONLIGHT streamed through the chapel windows.

Faint bands of multicolored light danced across the cracked stone floor between the altar and the pews. Eli sat in the first row of the little church behind the house, letting his eyes unfocus as he listened to the silence.

His mother had been dead for close to six weeks.

His father, closer to six minutes.

He’d knelt over the body, at the bottom of the stairs, waited for his heart to slow, and stop. And felt—peace. Relief. He’d come to the chapel to atone, expecting the good feeling to dissipate, give way to horror, guilt, and grief.

It hadn’t yet.

It wouldn’t, he told himself, so long as he stayed here.

In this seat. In this space. Where everything was—

A hand came down on his shoulder.

Eli looked up and saw Gabriel standing over him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, thoughts blurring as he tried to make sense of the man’s presence in this place. But then the air behind him seemed to shimmer faintly. The outline of wings. Gabriel, the archangel. The messenger.

“I apologize,” he said.

“For what?” asked Eli, right before the angel stabbed him.

The illusion shattered with the pain. The chapel cracked and broke like glass, giving way to the pale walls of his room at EON. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, a small knife jutting from his side, where Gabriel—wingless now—had driven it. Eli moved to free the blade so he could heal, but Gabriel’s hand closed over his, pinning it in place.

“Leave it there,” he instructed. “And follow me.”

It hurt, but Eli did as he was told.

He rose, and fell in step behind Gabriel, blood dotting the floor in his wake.

XXXVIINOW. THEN.

VICTOR killed the engine just inside the gate.

Ahead, EON stood like a squat white grave in an empty field.

A blue sports car idled, abandoned, halfway to the reinforced doors, which now hung open, as if in invitation.

“Well,” said June, hopping down from the front seat. “Everything about that right there screams trap.”

Victor didn’t disagree. The only question was Whose? Judging by the dreamlike stillness that hung over the place, and the lack of agents swarming out to meet them, he could hazard a guess.

“I don’t suppose this is your doing?” he asked Mitch, who had gotten access to the mainframe, and with it, the overall security, the layout of the building, and the camera feeds, which showed Sydney in the northwest quadrant.