Page 144 of Villains Series

THE DAY BEFORE

MERIT CENTRAL HOSPITAL

IT was seventeen minutes past five.

Victor leaned back against Dumont’s gray sedan in the hospital parking garage and scrolled through Dom’s texts as he waited for the doctor. The buzzing in his skull seemed to ratchet up as he skimmed the most recent times.

3 minutes, 49 seconds.

3 minutes, 52 seconds.

3 minutes, 56 seconds.

4 minutes, 04 seconds.

The stairwell door clattered open across the garage.

Victor glanced up and saw Dumont, dark skin, gray hair, head bowed over his tablet as he headed toward his car. Toward Victor.

Victor didn’t move, simply waited for the doctor to come to him.

“Dr. Dumont?”

The man looked up, brows furrowing. Victor thought he saw something cross the doctor’s face. Not surprise, exactly, but fear.

“Can I help you?”

Victor studied him, fingers flexing.

“I certainly hope so.”

Dumont looked around the parking garage.

“I’m off work,”

he said.

“but you can make an appointment—”

Victor didn’t have time for this—he took hold of the doctor’s nerves, and twisted. Dumont buckled with a shocked cry. He clutched his chest, sweat breaking out along his brow.

Having made his point, Victor let go.

Dumont sagged back against his car.

“You’re—an EO.”

“Just like you,”

said Victor.

“I don’t—hurt people,”

said Dumont.

“No? Then how does your power work?”

Dumont let out a shaky breath.

“I can see—how people are broken. I can—see how—to put them back together.”

Relief swept through Victor. Finally, a promising lead.

“Good,”

he said, stepping toward the doctor. “Show me.”

Dumont shook his head. Victor was about to take hold of the doctor’s nerves again when the stairwell door swung open and a small huddle of nurses stepped out, talking animatedly. A car beeped nearby. Victor shifted to block their view.

“Not here,”

muttered Dumont.

“Then where?”

asked Victor.

The doctor nodded at the hospital.

“My office is on the seventh—”

“No,”

said Victor. Too many eyes. Too many doors.

Dumont rubbed his forehead.

“The fifth floor is under renovation. It should be empty. That’s the best I can do.”

Victor hesitated, but the humming in his head was spreading to his limbs. He was running out of time.

“Fine,”

he said.

“lead the way.”

MEANWHILE, ACROSS TOWN …

Sydney tried to call Victor, but it went straight to voicemail every time.

What did June mean when she said he was in trouble?

They’d been careful. They were always careful.

Do you trust me or not?

In that moment, Sydney had. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Sydney’s hand went automatically to the gun she now kept tucked in her coat, thumb already resting against the safety.

But then she recognized the heavy tread, and turned to see Mitch striding toward her across the rooftop garden.

“There you are,”

he said cheerfully.

She let go of the gun. “Hey,”

she said.

“Just admiring the view.”

She tried to keep her voice light, but her head was still spinning, and she was afraid it would show on her face, so she turned her back on Mitch.

“It’s weird, isn’t it? How cities change. Buildings go up, and come down, and it looks the same—and different.”

“Like you,”

said Mitch, ruffling her pink wig. The gesture was light, easy, but there was a strain in his voice, and the silence, when it fell, was heavy. Syd’s mind was on Victor, but she knew Mitch’s was on her sister.

They’d never talked about what really happened to Serena. It had been too soon, and then too late. The wound had healed, as best as it could.

But now that they were back in Merit, the finished Falcon Price building glinting in the distance, the air was thick with everything they’d never said.

“Hey, Syd,”

started Mitch, but she cut him off.

“Do you ever wish you were an EO?”

Mitch’s brow crinkled, caught off guard by the question. He didn’t answer right away. He’d always been careful like that, sorting out his words before he said them.

“I remember when I first met Victor,”

he said at last.

“These guys inside were giving me a hard time, and he just…”

Mitch slid his hand through the air.

“He made it look so easy. I guess to him it probably was. But watching it made me feel … small.”

Syd laughed.

“You’re the biggest guy I know.”

He flashed her a smile, but it was sad at the edges.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m in a fight, and all I’ve got are my hands, and the other guy has a knife. But that guy with the knife, eventually he’s going to face someone with a gun. And the one with the gun is going to go up against someone with a bomb. The truth is, Syd, there will always be somebody stronger than you. That’s just the way the world works.”

He looked up at the shining skyscraper.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a human versus a human or a human versus an EO or an EO versus an EO. You do what you can. You fight, and you win, until you don’t.”

Sydney swallowed, and turned her attention back to the skyline.

“Any word from Victor?”

she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

Mitch shook his head.

“Not yet. But don’t worry.”

His hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“He can take care of himself.”

MERIT CENTRAL HOSPITAL

Their steps echoed on the stairs.

“What exactly happens at the apex of these episodes?”

asked Dumont.

“Nerve impairment. Muscular seizure.”

Victor ticked off the symptoms.

“Atrial fibrillation. Cardiac arrest. Death.”

Dumont glanced back. “Death?”

Victor nodded.

“Do you know how many times you’ve died? Are we talking about three to four recurrences or a dozen—”

“One hundred and thirty-two.”

The doctor’s face went slack.

“That’s … not possible.”

Victor considered him dryly.

“I assure you, I’ve kept track.”

“But the sheer strain on your body.”

Dumont shook his head.

“You shouldn’t be alive.”

“That is both the cause and the crux of our problem, isn’t it?”

“Have you experienced cognitive impairment?”

Victor hesitated.

“There’s a brief period of disorientation immediately after. And it’s getting longer.”

“It’s a miracle you’re still forming sentences.”

Miracle. Victor had always hated that word.

They reached the fifth floor, and Dumont pushed open a set of doors. He hit a switch and the lights came on, one shuddering wave at a time, illuminating a broad floor that was indeed in the process of being torn apart and put back together. Plastic sheeting hung in makeshift curtains, equipment covered in white tarps, and for an instant Victor imagined himself back in the half-built Falcon Price building, voices bouncing off concrete.

“There are some exam rooms this way,”

said Dumont, but Victor refused to move.

“This is far enough.”

They were standing in the middle of the tangled space. Victor would have preferred a clean line of sight to the exits, but the tarping made that impossible.

Dumont set his things down and shrugged out of his coat.

“How long have you been an EO?”

asked Victor.

“Two years,”

said the doctor.

Two years. And he’d only just shown up in their search matrix.

“Go ahead and sit down,”

said Dumont, gesturing to a chair. Victor continued to stand.

“Tell me something, Doctor. When you were dying, what were your final thoughts?”

“My final thoughts?”

echoed Dumont, considering.

“I thought about my family … how much I’d miss them … how I didn’t want to leave…”

He stumbled over the answer, as if he couldn’t remember. Perhaps he was simply nervous, but as he stammered, Victor was reminded of an actor forgetting their lines.

“And you said your power is to diagnose a person’s ailments?”

It didn’t fit.

An EO’s near-death experience was colored so strongly by their last moments, their will to survive, but also their dire, most desperate wishes. Dumont’s final moments, final thoughts, should have shaped his power, and yet—

The doctor managed a nervous smile.

“I thought I was meant to be diagnosing you.”

Victor parroted the smile.

“Yes, of course. Go ahead.”

But Dumont hesitated, patting his shirt pocket.

“Is something wrong?”

asked Victor, fingers drifting toward his holstered gun.

“I don’t have my glasses.”

Dumont turned away.

“I must have left them downstairs. I’ll just go and—”

But Victor was already behind him.

He couldn’t afford to use his power—pain generated noise, and noise drew attention—so Victor settled for pressing the gun against the base of the doctor’s spine and wrapping his free hand over the doctor’s mouth.

“The trouble with conventional weapons,”

he said in the doctor’s ear.

“is that the damage they do is so permanent. If you make a sound, you will never walk again. Do you understand?”

Dumont nodded once.

“You’re not an EO, are you?”

A short sideways flick. No.

“Are they waiting for your signal?”

The doctor shook his head and tried to speak, his words muffled against Victor’s palm. Victor drew his hand away, and the doctor repeated himself.

“They’re already here.”

As if on cue, Victor heard doors swing open, the shuffle of steps.

“I’m sorry,”

continued Dumont.

“They have people at my house. Watching my family. They said if I—”

Victor cut him off.

“Your motives are irrelevant. The only thing I need to know is how to get out.”

He slid the gun’s safety off.

“Exits. Tell me.”

“There’s a service elevator—the others won’t stop here—and two internal stairs.”

And of course, there was the way they’d come in, the most direct route—and the one with the least amount of cover.

Boots shuffled across the linoleum nearby, the harsh overhead lights casting shadows on the plastic sheeting. Victor needed to be able to see his targets. But he didn’t need to be able to see them clearly.

He reached for the nearest shadow and it buckled with a cry as the pretense of surprise shattered, and shots rang out, and the fifth floor plunged into chaos.

* * *

VICTOR’S hand twitched, and two more soldiers went down screaming, before they cut the lights. A second later he heard the telltale sound of a metal clasp, the hiss of air, and then the canisters came rolling across the ground, filling the air with smoke.

“Hold your breath,”

he ordered, dragging Dumont back against the wall as scopes traced red lines through the billowing white. The smoke burned Victor’s eyes, clawing at his senses, and through it all the crackle of energy was spreading through his limbs—warning.

Not yet, he thought. Not yet.

The service elevator groaned open, and Victor had time to see the barrel of a gun, the first traces of black armor, combat boots. He twisted sideways, releasing his hostage as he ducked out of the soldiers’ line of fire.

Dumont threw up his hands as Victor reached the stairwell.

“Don’t shoot!”

called the doctor, coughing as the smoke hit his lungs.

The soldiers pushed past him as Victor surged into the stairwell and started down.

More footsteps rose up from below, but Victor had the high ground now. By the time the first soldier saw him, Victor already had their nerves in his grasp. He twisted the dial all the way up, and they fell, like puppets without strings.

Victor rounded their bodies and continued down. He was nearly to the third-floor landing when the first spasm hit.

For a second, he thought he’d been shot.

Then he realized, with horror, that he was out of time. The current arced through him, lighting his nerves, and he bowed his head, steadying himself against the rail before forcing his body onward.

He made it to the first floor, and opened the door just in time to see a soldier heading straight for him, weapon raised. Before Victor could summon the strength or the focus to bring the soldier down, someone else had done it for him.

A silencer swung into view, followed by three muted thumps as the gun fired point-blank into the side of the soldier’s head. It wasn’t enough to pierce the helmet, but it caught him off guard, and half a second later the shooter—a female doctor—stepped into sight. She stepped right into the soldier’s arms, and then—almost elegantly—drove a blade up under his helmet.

The soldier dropped like a stone, and the female doctor turned on Victor.

“Don’t just stand there,”

she hissed, her voice strangely familiar. Footsteps sounded overhead and below.

“Find another way out.”

Victor had questions, but there was no time to ask.

He turned and continued down the stairs toward the hospital sublevels. Burst through a set of doors into an empty hall, the sign at the end marked MORGUE in small, mocking letters. But beyond that—an exit sign. Halfway there, the next spasm hit, and Victor stumbled, one shoulder slamming hard into the concrete wall. His knee buckled, and he went down.

He tried to force himself back up as the doors swung open behind him.

“Stay down!”

ordered a soldier as Victor collapsed to the floor.

“We’ve got him,”

said one voice.

“He’s down,”

said another.

He couldn’t get up, couldn’t get away. But Victor still had one weapon. The current climbed higher, the dial turned up, and he held on as long as possible, clutching to life one fractured, agonizing second at a time until the boots came into sight.

And then, Victor let go.

Let the pain crash over him in a final wave, washing everything away.

* * *

VICTOR came to in the dark.

His vision slid in and out for a second before finally coming into focus. He was lying on a gurney, the ceiling much lower than it should be. Victor tested his limbs, expecting to find them restrained, but there was nothing on his wrists or ankles. He tried to sit up, and pain closed tightly around his chest. Two of his ribs felt broken, but he could still breathe.

“I started CPR,”

said a voice.

“But I was worried it would do more damage than good.”

Victor turned his head and saw the figure in the dark.

Dumont.

The doctor was sitting on a bench a couple feet away, half hidden by shadow.

Victor looked around, and realized he was lying in the back of an ambulance.

The seconds before his episode came back in fragments, broken frames, but they didn’t explain how he’d gotten from the basement floor to here.

“I found you,”

explained the doctor, unprompted.

“outside the morgue. Well, I found the soldiers first.”

“You didn’t turn me over to EON,”

observed Victor. “Why?”

Dumont examined his hands.

“You could have killed me up on the fifth floor. You didn’t.”

It hadn’t been an act of mercy. There had simply been no point.

“And the soldiers?”

asked Victor.

“They were already dead.”

“So was I.”

Dumont nodded.

“Medicine is full of calculated risks and split-second decisions. I made one.”

“You could have walked away.”

“I may not be ExtraOrdinary,”

said Dumont.

“but I am a doctor. And I took an oath.”

A siren tore through the air nearby, and Victor tensed, but it was only another ambulance, pulling out of the bay. The bay …

“We’re still at the hospital?”

asked Victor.

“Obviously,”

said Dumont.

“I said I’d help you live, not help you escape. Frankly, I was beginning to doubt your odds of doing either.”

Victor frowned, feeling his pockets for his phone.

“How long was I gone?”

“Nearly four and a half minutes.”

Victor swore under his breath. No wonder the doctor hadn’t driven away.

“I should run some tests,”

continued Dumont, producing a penlight.

“make sure your cognitive function hasn’t been—”

“That won’t be necessary,”

said Victor. There was nothing Dumont could do for him now—nothing that would make a difference. And while four and a half minutes was far too long to be dead, it wasn’t long enough for EON’s enforcement team to clear out. They would still be on-site. How long until more joined them?

Victor nodded at the front of the ambulance.

“I assume you can drive?”

Dumont hesitated.

“I can, but…”

“Get behind the wheel.”

Dumont didn’t move.

Victor wasn’t in the mood to torture him, so he resorted to logic instead.

“You said they had eyes on your family. If you go back in there now, they’ll know you helped me escape.”

Dumont frowned.

“And how does driving you away make me less complicit?”

“You’re not an accomplice,”

said Victor, producing a pair of cable-ties from a toolbox.

“You’re a hostage. I can tie you to the steering wheel now, or later. It’s up to you.”

The doctor silently climbed behind the wheel. Victor took the passenger’s seat. He flipped the sirens on.

“Where am I going?”

asked Dumont.

Victor turned the question over.

“There’s a bus station on the southern edge of the city. Drive.”

Dumont hit the gas, and the ambulance peeled out of the bay. After a few blocks, Victor killed the sirens and the lights. He sat back in the seat, flexing his fingers. He could feel the doctor cutting glances at him.

“Eyes on the road,”

said Victor.

Ten minutes later, the bus depot came into sight, and Victor pointed to an empty stretch of sidewalk.

“There,” he said.

As Dumont started guiding the ambulance off the road, Victor reached over, took the wheel, and jerked it, forcing the vehicle up onto the curb.

“Don’t forget,”

he said.

“you’re in distress.”

Before Dumont could protest, Victor zip-tied his hands to the wheel.

“Do you have a phone on you?”

Dumont nodded at his pocket.

Victor drew the cell from the doctor’s coat and threw it out the window.

“There,”

he said, climbing out of the ambulance.

Now he had a head start.