Page 195 of Victorious

His phone buzzed.

He dug it out, frowning at the message on the screen.

It was a movement notice, a signal from a tracker that had gone beyond its normal range. A tracker that he’d embedded in the fur, just beneath Dol’s collar, shortly after Sydney Clarke had brought him back.

Technically, Victor hadn’t lied to June three years ago, when she asked if he knew where Sydney was. He didn’t because he wasn’t tracking her. Just the dog, who clung to Syd like a shadow, going wherever she did. The dog who, according to his phone, was now on the move for the first time in months. Traveling too far, too fast, beyond the twenty-mile radius he’d set. Which meant they were in a car.

Victor swiped over to the message board, where Mitch had assured him, only a few hours ago, that everything was fine.

But if everything was fine, why had they suddenly left town?

He checked the inbox, but there was no new message.

Victor’s thumb slid across the screen as he wrote.

SHARPENEDSPADE1652: BAD WEATHER?

He leaned against the lockers, waiting, but the dot by Mitch’s name stayed gray. Offline. Swiping back to the other app, he watched the tracker continue moving west. Away from Herald. And away from him.

Victor held the current cartridge to the light, gauging how many doses he had left.

Chances were, nothing was wrong, and Mitch was simply being cautious.

Chances were—but Victor didn’t like taking chances, not where those two were concerned.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pushing the locker shut.

XXXIXNOW. THEN.

THE lecture hall was silent, the students taking an exam.

Victor stood at the back of the auditorium, a pair of sunglasses hiding his eyes. He spun the disc between his fingers, watching as the light bled out beyond the window, and the red dot on his screen continued west. Every passing hour that it didn’t stop, or turn around, every hour that Mitch didn’t answer his message on the board, was a pebble on the scales, tipping Victor’s mind away from overcautiousness, suspicion growing into certainty that something had gone wrong.

And he wasn’t there to fix it.

At some point, Dani glanced up, past the rows of students, and noticed him, her expression creasing with concern.

He was two days early for their next appointment.

She was no longer making large refinements to the serum, but he still submitted to a battery of tests each week, designed to track his body’s progress, as well as the drug’s long-term effects. Dani insisted on monitoring Victor’s vitals.

In return, he continued to monitor her online presence.

So far, she’d been smart enough not to search for things like EOs, not by name—he’d done his best to convey the danger of going down that road—but he suspected she was making notes somewhere.

“I hope you’re not planning to write a paper on me,” he said one night, as she typed up his latest numbers.

“Don’t worry,” she shot back. “I’ll wait till you’re dead.”

Now, Dani flagged down her latest TA—not the one who’d “fainted” in her lab—to take her place. She nodded at Victor, and he slipped out of the auditorium, and met her in the hall.

“What is it?” she asked, but Victor didn’t answer, not until they reached her office.

“I need to take a trip,” he said, drawing off the dark sunglasses as the door swung shut behind him.

Dani looked startled. “Why?” And then, when he didn’t answer, “How long will you be gone?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”