Page 155 of Villains Series

THE LAST AFTERNOON

EON

VICTOR opened his eyes, and saw only himself staring back.

His lean limbs, sallow skin, black clothes, reflected in the polished ceiling. He was lying on a narrow cot against the wall of a square space, quickly discernible as some type of cell.

Panic slid like a needle beneath Victor’s skin. Four years he’d spent in a place like this—no, not quite like this, not as clever, not as advanced—but just as empty. He had been buried alive in that solitary confinement cell, and every day Victor had sworn that once he got out he would never let himself be trapped again.

He brought a hand to his chest and felt the bruise between his ribs where the first dart had gone in, scraping bone. He sat up, paused for a moment to let the lingering nausea pass, then stood. There was no clock in here, no way to tell how long he’d been unconscious, aside from the constant hum of his power, its strength and volume growing with each passing minute.

Victor looked around, and resisted the urge to call out, unnerved by the idea that no one would answer, that the only response he’d be greeted by was his own echo. Instead, he studied the surroundings. The walls, which he’d originally taken for rock, were actually plastic, or maybe fiberglass. He could feel a subtle charge coursing through it—a deterrent, no doubt, against escape.

He looked up, scanning the ceiling for cameras, and was interrupted by a familiar voice filling the cell.

“Mr. Vale,”

said Stell.

“We’ve come a long way, only to find ourselves back where we started. The difference, of course, is that this time, you won’t be getting out.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,”

said Victor, forcing his voice to hold its edge.

“But I have to admit, this isn’t exactly sporting.”

“That’s because this isn’t a game. You’re a murderer, and an escaped convict, and this is a prison.”

“What happened to my trial?”

“You forfeited it.”

“And Eli?”

“He serves another purpose.”

“He’s playing you,”

sneered Victor.

“And by the time you figure out how, it will be too late.”

Stell didn’t rise to the bait, leaving Victor in silence. He was running out of patience, and out of time. He looked up at the cameras. He may be in a cage, but Victor had prepared for the possibility. He had left himself a key.

The question was—where was Dominic Rusher?

* * *

DOM tugged at the steel standard-issue handcuffs, but they were bolted to the table.

Three years, and his only fear had been waking up in an EON cell. Instead, he’d woken up in an interrogation room.

He was sitting in a metal chair, cuffed to a steel table, and he was alone, the only door clearly locked, the control panel on the wall marked by a solid red line.

Panic flickered through him, and Dom had to remind himself that they didn’t know he was an EO.

Not yet.

And he needed to keep it that way as long as possible.

Dom was truly trapped—he could slip out of time, but it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good, because even without time, he would still be chained to a fucking table. And he’d be even more screwed because the moment he crossed back into reality, the slip would show, the gap between where he’d been and where he was. Maybe it would just look like a stutter, a shutter, a glitch. But there were no glitches in a place like EON, and everyone watching him on camera would know what it meant. What he was.

So Dom waited, counting time in his head, wondering where Eli was now, hoping Victor, at least, had gotten away.

Finally, the keypad turned from red to green.

The door unsealed, and two soldiers came in.

Dom had been hoping for a friendly face, but instead he got Rios again, joined by a hard-edged, brutish soldier named Hancock. Dom’s attention hung on the sliver of shrinking freedom as the door behind Rios swung shut, and the codes went red again.

Shit.

Rios crossed to the table and set down a file. Dom’s file. He scanned the tops of the pages, searching for paperclips, staples, anything he might be able to use.

“Agent Rusher,”

said Rios.

“You want to tell us what you were doing in the director’s office?”

Dom had put his short time awake to good use. He was ready for this line of questioning.

“I was trying to stop a murderer from escaping.”

Rios raised a brow.

“How do you figure that?”

Dom sat forward.

“Do you know about Eli Ever? Or Eliot Cardale, or whatever name he wants to go by? Do you know what he did?”

“I’ve read his file,”

she said.

“And I’ve read yours.”

“Then you know I was one of his targets. I still don’t know why—but I should be dead. Would have been, too, if Eli had gotten to me. So when I heard that Stell planned to have him transported off-site, I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t have that maniac loose in Merit again.”

“That wasn’t your call, soldier.”

“So fire me,” said Dom.

“That’s not my call,”

said Rios.

“You’ll be held here until the director returns to make a decision.”

Rios was shuffling the file as she spoke, and Dom caught sight of a metal staple just before Hancock’s comm went off. The low static muffled the words, but one of them leapt out.

Vale.

Dom tried to hide the recognition on his face as Hancock lifted the comm to his ear.

Vale … awake …

“In the meantime,”

continued Rios.

“I suggest—”

“How did you get into Stell’s office?”

asked Dom, changing directions. She looked up, a shadow crossing her face. Dom pressed on.

“There’s only one door, and I was facing it. But you showed up behind me.”

Rios’s eyes narrowed. “Hancock,”

she said.

“Go call Stell. Ask him what he wants us to do next.”

Dominic really did want to hear Rios’s explanation, but not as much as he needed to get out. He waited as Hancock swiped his keycard, waited as the line turned green and the door clicked open.

“Now, Agent Rusher,”

she continued.

“let’s disc—”

He didn’t give her a chance to finish. Dominic took a deep breath, like a swimmer before a dive, and jerked backward, the world parting around him as he slipped out of time, and into the shadows.

The room hung in perfect stillness, a painting in shades of gray—Rios, frozen, her face unreadable. Hancock, halfway through the door. Dominic, still handcuffed to the table.

He rose, pulling the stapled pages toward him, and got to work prying the bit of metal loose. He worked the sliver free, then straightened it out, and began fitting the slim bar between the teeth of the handcuff and the locking mechanism. It took several tries, the weight of the shadows like wet wool draped across his limbs, and a red welt rising on Dominic’s wrist from the constant applied pressure, but finally the lock came loose. He pried the handcuff open, repeated the same grueling process with the other side, and was free.

Dom fastened the cuffs back around Rios’s wrists, then ducked under Hancock’s frozen arm into the hall. The air dragged around him like an ocean tide as he approached the nearest control room. There was only one other soldier there, a female agent named Linfield, sitting in front of a console, and frozen mid-stretch. Dominic freed the cattle prod from her holster and brought it to the base of her neck before stepping back into the flow of time.

A flash of blue-white light, the crackle of current, and Linfield slumped forward. Dom pushed her chair aside and started searching, hands flying across the keyboard.

He didn’t have long. Every second Dom stood in the real world was a second exposed, a second he could be caught, captured, a second alarms were going up, and soldiers were invariably crashing toward him. And yet, despite it all, the world narrowed as he typed, his heart racing, but the pulse strong, steady. He’d always been good under pressure.

Dom didn’t have time to figure out which cell Victor was being kept in, so he chose the fastest option.

He opened them all.

* * *

ONE minute Victor had been pacing the confines of his silent, empty cell, and the next the world was plunged into motion and sound. An alarm, high and bright, wailed as the farthest wall of the cell dropped away, the solid pane of fiberglass retracting into the floor.

Lights flashed white overhead, but instead of going into lockdown, the facility seemed to be opening. Coming apart. To every side, Victor heard the metal crank of seals breaking, doors unlocking.

About time.

He stepped out of the cell, only to find himself in a second, larger chamber, this one cast in concrete instead of plastic. It was roughly the size of a small airplane hangar—he circled until he found a door. It swung open under Victor’s touch and gave way onto a white hall.

He made it three steps before whatever Dominic had managed to cause was suddenly reversed.

Doors slammed, locks sealed, alarms cut off and then started again, the lights no longer white but a deep arterial red, like a twisted game of Simon Says.

But Victor didn’t stop moving.

Not when a hail of distant gunfire echoed in a nearby hall, not when boots sounded on slick linoleum, not when plumes of white gas began to pour through the overhead vents.

A barrier slammed across the hall in front of him and so Victor doubled back, holding his breath as he swung around a corner, found himself face to face with two EON soldiers, helmeted and armed.

He lunged for their nerves as their weapons flew up, but Victor was too late—their fingers reached the triggers an instant before his power could reach them.

The shots rang out, a burst of gunfire, and Victor lunged sideways, but the hall was narrow, and there was no escape.

A bullet—not a tranquilizer this time, but slim, piercing steel—grazed his side right before his power knocked the hands on the guns off course. But Victor’s own hold faltered too, and in that stolen second the guns adjusted, retrained on his head, his heart.

The soldiers fired, the hall filling with the sharp retorts, and Victor braced for the impact.

It never came.

Instead, an arm wrapped around his shoulders, Dominic’s body twisting in front of Victor like a shield as he pulled them both back into the dark.

The world went suddenly, perfectly, still.

They were standing in the same place, in the same hallway, but all the violence and urgency had been sucked out of the space, replaced by silence and calm. The advancing soldiers hovered, frozen in time, the bullets carving lines of motion as they hung suspended in the air.

Victor dragged in a few steadying breaths, but when he tried to speak, nothing came out. The shadows were a void, swallowing not only color and light, but also sound.

Dominic’s face was a grim mask a foot from Victor’s own as the soldier’s hand tightened on his sleeve, and he tipped his head in a wordless command.

Follow me.