Page 65 of Victorious

He returned to the kitchen, checking the cupboards as he brewed a pot of coffee.

Gabriel poured two cups and carried them down to the street.

To the driver’s credit, he didn’t start the engine, or move to pull away. Gabriel knocked one mug gently against the window.

The driver rolled it down.

The man had traded his uniform for plain clothes, but Gabriel recognized the stone-faced soldier who seemed to shadow Helena.

“Dr. Gray,” he said, not bothering to feign surprise or bother with excuses.

“I made coffee,” said Gabriel, taking a sip from one cup as he held the other out. “I thought you might like some.”

The man hesitated, then accepted the offer. “Thanks,” he said, taking a long sip.

“What’s your name?” asked Gabriel.

“Evanson, sir.”

“Well, Evanson, you must have pissed off Director Roy to get stuck doing this.”

The man cracked a crooked smile.

“I’m sorry I’m not more entertaining. I could run some errands, if you like.”

The man chuckled, then coughed as if something was stuck in his throat. He took another gulp of coffee, thinking it would help. Of course, it didn’t.

The soldier began to cough in earnest then, hacking as the rat poison took effect, foam and spittle forming on his lips. Gabriel set his own cup down on the hood as the man began to claw at his throat, then at his seatbelt, both to no avail.

He rounded the car, and slipped into the passenger seat as Evanson retched, and gasped, and toppled forward, catching the soldier’s head before it hit the horn. He touched the man’s throat, as the pulse stuttered, then failed. And even if Gabriel hadn’t felt it, he’d have known, the moment the other man died. The same moment a cold current hummed beneath his fingertips. As if this power—his power—were a battery, charged and ready to be used.

He flexed his hand on the dead EON soldier.

And as he willed the body back to life, he thought about Director Roy’s theory—that an EO’s power wasn’t arbitrary. Perhaps she was right.

Gabriel had only to think of himself on those collapsing stairs, reaching for his wife, his son, willing them to come to him, to listen, to obey. The symmetry was there, as if death were a kind of crucible, the nature of those final moments forging the person and the power that emerged.

It was a theory that certainly merited examination.

Evanson gasped to life, and Gabriel withdrew his touch, the cold retreating, though the headache lingered.

The soldier blinked, oblivious to the blood and spittle on his bottom lip, the poison and the poisoner both forgotten.

He sat, and waited like a lump of clay, waiting to be sculpted.

“Hello, Evanson.”

The soldier blinked and smiled blandly. “Hello, Dr. Gray.”

Iris and Ian had known and loved him for years. Even with Walsh, back at the hospital, there’d been a history. He’d wondered if a stranger would feel the same innate allegiance, or if they’d prove less pliable.

“What were your orders?” he asked.

“To follow you,” answered the soldier. “Report back exactly where you went. What you did. If you saw or spoke with anyone.”

That was promising. “Anything else?”

“Your apartment has been bugged,” he added helpfully. “There’s one mic under the cabinet over the sink. Another on the lamp beside the sofa. A third just on the top right corner of the doorframe.”