Page 101 of Victorious

He had the vague sense that he’d been dreaming—though of what, he couldn’t say. Slowly, he sat up, scraping a hand over his face. His limbs and mind felt leaden, sluggish, as if still disentangling from sleep. It reminded him of those rare moments as a student back at Lockland, when he’d go too long without a break, then crash so hard he felt hungover.

But Eli Ever hadn’t slept in years.

His power wouldn’t let him, fatigue being something physical, a bodily need for rest. His constant healing rendered sleep unnecessary. The most he’d ever been able to manage was a meditative doze, a halfway state.

How then, had he been unconscious?

And for how long?

Eli closed his eyes, trying to remember where he’d been before, what he’d been doing, and was unnerved when his mind supplied only a flat expanse of black. As if the memories had been excised.

He rose, scanning his current confines. A cell, parading as a room.

Not unlike the isolation Stell had kept him in. Minus his files. His desk, his shelves, his work. In its place, green walls that looked like plaster, felt like glass. A sofa and a table and a bathroom alcove.

Eli padded barefoot to the sink, and the mirror mounted over it, pausing to study his reflection.

As usual, he found himself unchanged—the same face that had been staring back at him for fifteen years—but as his gaze dipped to his front, something lanced across his mind. Pain, and memory.

He was on Haverty’s lab table, pinned down like a moth, his chest pried open and his beating heart—

But no. That was before.

Before his imprisonment here. Before Stell.

Before he dug the trackers out with the broken casing of a pen.

Before the gala.

The memories came rushing back in now.

Marcella falling to her death, and Eli fleeing, Victor in his wake. And Haverty. Haverty had gotten to him first, and there had been sleep then, or at least, a brief stretch of unconsciousness. Haverty’s serum blocking his ability to heal. But Victor had arrived, and Haverty had died, and then—his mind juddered again. Eli squeezed his eyes shut, trying to catch hold of the thread.

He was kneeling over Victor, weapon raised, and then—

BANG.

Eli’s hand went to his chest as his body remembered the force of the bullet. The pain, and then, the cold, the sense of something vital being severed, a house in which the power had suddenly been cut. His body dropping into darkness.

And now, somehow, he was back here.

At EON.

A voice cut through his thoughts. “Hello, Eli. Welcome back.”

The sound seemed to come from everywhere, but a moment later, the wall to his left turned from green to glass, revealing a man he’d never seen before. Calm, but confident, salt-and-pepper hair swept back, sleeves rolled to his elbows, eyes dark behind a pair of wire-frame glasses.

Eli turned toward the stranger. “Who are you?”

The man offered a disarming smile. “I’m Dr. Gray.”

Eli’s hands twitched reflexively. “I met an EON doctor once,” he said. “It wasn’t a positive experience.”

Beyond the glass partition, the man’s expression shifted into one of somber understanding. “I know, and I’m sorry for that. There’s no need for formalities. You’re welcome to call me Gabriel, instead.”

Gabriel. The name rang through Eli like a bell. In the Bible, Gabriel had been an archangel, tasked with carrying God’s word and will. Eli had wanted to be an angel once, the scars on his back like folded wings. But that was a long time ago.

“Sometimes we grow out of a name,” said the man, as if reading his mind. “Sometimes we grow into it. I for one have never been religious. And yet, I’ve always felt mine suits me well.”