Page 201 of Victorious

“I’m just so sick of running,” Sydney said.

At first, her voice had the faint scratch of phone lines—as if she wasn’t really there. Sitting in another diner in another city, her cell to her ear, talking the way they had so many times, when Syd was on the run. But they were in the same place now, and when June reached out and touched Syd’s hand, it was solid, cool as stone.

“So let’s stop.”

Sydney looked up, blue eyes bright with hope, her voice becoming stronger. “First we have to go somewhere.”

“Where should we go?”

Sydney shrugged and smiled. “I don’t really care,” she said, “as long as you’re there, too.”

Warmth bloomed inside June’s chest.

It was exactly what she wanted to hear.

IVNOW. THEN.

“OH, well,” said Eli, wiping the tears from his eyes. “If I want to see the stars again, I’ll just have to survive.”

He turned back toward the rooftop door. Victor watched him go, and sighed. Because he knew what would happen when they went downstairs. Knew, because it already had.

He began to turn the dials up, until his vision flickered, the dark roof trading space with blank white halls. The two worlds, superimposed as Eli held the roof door open. Looked over his shoulder.

“You coming, Vic?”

It was tempting.

Even though he knew it wasn’t real. Just another kind of phantom. A distorted memory. But one where he and Eli hadn’t killed each other yet.

Some part of Victor wanted to mute the pain.

Let the memory fold over him again.

But the rest remembered he had work to do. He caught hold of his nerves and turned them up until the vision splintered, broke apart, taking Eli with it.

EON’s harsh white walls sprang back into focus.

Victor had moved, while in the dream, and it took a moment to orient himself, to call to mind the layout Mitch had showed him.

Gabriel’s office lay at the center of the compound.

In a perfect world, the route there would be empty.

It wasn’t.

As Victor rounded the first corner, he found himself face-to-face with two EON agents.

But instead of surging toward him, one just stood there, facing the wall, while the other drifted aimlessly. Both lost inside Serena’s dream.

Victor shot them anyway.

Better safe than sorry.

He felt the next body before he saw it, that same slippery current. But instead of another agent, he found an EO, dressed in dark gray scrubs. An EO who, based on the alertness in his eyes and the blood dripping from a deep cut in one hand, wasn’t dreaming.

Great.

The ordinary puppets were bad enough, but Gabriel had clearly turned his talents to ExtraOrdinaries, too. And that was troubling.