Page 151 of Victorious

Eli tried to speak, but he couldn’t find the air. His vision slipped—light, dark, ice, shack—caught between the two.

Another burst of piercing feedback, then:

“Eli, you need to move.”

As if he wasn’t trying.

His body fought to obey the order at the same time his mind rejected it.

He tasted blood, but kept trying, one boot shifting on the creaking floorboards before he seized again, Gabriel’s command of his body warring with Serena’s hold of his mind. The two forces tearing him apart.

“Eli…” started Gabriel, but Serena’s will was stronger, and soon the doctor’s voice dropped away, and Eli was left with nothing but the pulse and the pain and the ice.

XNOW. THEN.

THE dream skipped, the way dreams do.

One moment the cake was whole, smoke still curling from the candles she’d blown out, and the next, it had somehow been cut, and served, and eaten. Sydney had no sense of how much time had really passed—seconds, minutes, hours—and no memory of tasting it, but the plate sat before her, brushed with crumbs.

Serena swept it up and started toward the sink, and snow began to fall beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, blotting out the frozen lake and for a second, Syd felt cocooned, safe, before remembering it wasn’t real.

“No one can hurt us here,” her sister had said, but Eli had come close, and he hadn’t been alone.

Syd glanced toward his frozen form, fingers flexing on the sharpened point of wood again. The illusion flickered, and she saw Eli standing in the same spot, only now there was no ice. Just blood. Blood, running in narrow rivers from his nose and eyes, his teeth clenched as if in pain.

Good, she thought. I hope it hurts.

As her gaze roved over the darkened shack, something else caught her attention. The flowers. The ones Serena had taken from his hand and abandoned on the counter. The flowers, which were not really flowers, but a gun. Her gun.

“Did you hear me?”

Serena’s voice drew Sydney back. Her fingers loosened on the jagged splinter, and the dream surrounded her. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, what should we do next?”

Leave, thought Sydney. Run. Put as much distance as we can between the other EON agents and ourselves. But she couldn’t—she wouldn’t—abandon Mitch, and Dol. And if she was being honest with herself, the EON agents weren’t the only people she was afraid of.

Syd rose, and ambled toward the counter, and the bouquet.

She grazed the flowers, amazed by how real they looked and felt. Even when she knew. Her brain told her one thing, her senses another.

She was about to lift the flowers when Serena’s hand closed around her wrist. Sydney tensed as her sister tugged her away from the flowers—the gun—and turned her so they were face-to-face.

“What is it?” she said. “You can tell me.”

Syd swallowed hard. “I don’t know how you’re doing this.”

“Doing what?” Serena flashed a teasing smile, as if she knew, but wanted Syd to say it.

“This place. This power. I don’t know how—”

“Of course you do.” Serena’s eyes glowed bluer. She pulled Syd close, as if it were a secret. “I heard you calling, in the dark. Reaching out for me, the way I reached for you. You needed me, to come back. To fix things. To protect you. And now, because of you, I can.”

Sydney shivered at the thought.

EOs were created using their own will. Their own determination to survive. But to bring them back a second time, Sydney relied on hers. It was true, she’d never had to reach so far, or try so hard, never had to use her mind, her voice, as well as her strength. But the idea, that she’d given her sister so much power—

“I didn’t mean to change you,” she whispered.