The cell started ringing again. Victor took it from Mitch’s hand and answered. “Dominic.”

“You can’t just do that to me,” snapped the ex-soldier. “We had a deal.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” said Victor slowly, but Dominic was still going.

“One minute I’m fine and the next I’m on my hands and knees, trying not to pass out. No warning, nothing in my system to dull the pain, you don’t know what it was like—”

“I promise you, I do,” said Victor, tipping his head back against the concrete wall. “But you’re fine now?”

A shuddering breath. “Yeah, I’m back online.”

“How long did it last?”

“What? I don’t know. I was kind of distracted.”

Victor sighed, eyes sliding shut. “Next time, pay attention.”

“Next time?”

Victor hung up. He opened his eyes to find Mitch staring at him. “Did this happen before?”

Before. Victor knew what he meant. Once his life had been bisected by the night in the laboratory. Before, a human. After, an EO. Now, it was split down the line of his resurrection. Before, an EO. After—this. Which meant that it was Sydney’s doing. This was the inevitable flaw in her power, the fissure in his. Victor hadn’t avoided it after all. He’d simply ignored it.

Mitch swore, running his hands over his head. “We have to tell her.”

“No.”

“She’s going to find out.”

“No,” said Victor again. “Not yet.”

“Then when?”

When Victor understood what was happening, and how to fix it. When he had a plan, a solution as well as a problem. “When it will make a difference,” he said.

Mitch’s shoulders slumped, defeated.

“Maybe it won’t happen again,” said Victor.

“Maybe,” said Mitch.

Neither one of them believed it.

V

FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO

FULTON

IT happened again.

And again.

Three episodes in less than six months, the time between each a fraction shorter, the duration of death a fraction longer. It was Mitch who insisted he see a specialist. Mitch who found Dr. Adam Porter, a compact man with a hawkish face and a reputation as one of the best neurologists in the country.

Victor had never been fond of doctors.

Even back when he wanted to become one, it had never been in the interest of saving patients. He’d been drawn to the field of medicine for the knowledge, the authority, the control. He’d wanted to be the hand holding the scalpel, not the flesh parting beneath it.

Now Victor sat in Porter’s office, after hours, the buzzing in his skull just beginning to filter into his limbs. It was a risk, he knew, waiting until the episode was in its metastasis, but an accurate diagnosis required the presentation of symptoms.

Victor looked down at the patient questionnaire. Symptoms he could give, but details were more dangerous. He slid the paper back across the table without picking up the pen.

The doctor sighed. “Mr. Martin, you paid quite a premium for my services. I suggest you take advantage of them.”

“I paid that premium for privacy.”

Porter shook his head. “Very well,” he said, lacing his fingers. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” said Victor. “I’ve been having these episodes.”

“What kind of episodes?”

“Neurological,” he answered, toeing the line between omission and lie. “It starts as a sound, a buzzing in my head. It grows, until I can feel the humming, down to my bones. Like a charge.”

“And then?”

I die, thought Victor.

“I black out,” he said.

The doctor frowned. “How long has this been happening?”

“Five months.”

“Did you suffer any trauma?”

Yes.

“Not that I know of.”

“Changes in lifestyle?”

“No.”

“Any weakness in your limbs?”

“No.”

“Allergies?”

“No.”

“Have you noticed any specific triggers? Migraines can be triggered by caffeine, seizures by light, stress, lack of—”

“I don’t care what caused it,” said Victor, losing patience. “I just need to know what’s happening, and how to fix it.”

The doctor sat forward. “Well, then,” he said. “Let’s run some tests.”

* * *

VICTOR watched the lines chart across the screen, spiking like the tremors before an earthquake. Porter had attached a dozen electrodes to his scalp, and was now studying the EEG alongside him, a crease forming between his brows.

“What is it?” asked Victor.

The doctor shook his head. “This level of activity is abnormal, but the pattern doesn’t suggest epilepsy. See how closely the lines are gathered?” He tapped the screen. “That degree of neural excitation, it’s almost like there’s too much nerve conduction . . . an excess of electrical impulse.”

Victor studied the lines. It could be a trick of the mind, but the lines on the screen seemed to rise and fall with the tone in his skull, the peaks in rhythm growing with the hum under his skin.

Porter cut the program. “I need a more complete picture,” he said, removing the electrodes from Victor’s scalp. “Let’s get you into an MRI.”

The room was bare save for the scanner in the center—a floating table that slid into a tunnel of machinery. Slowly, Victor lay back on the table, his head coming to rest in a shallow brace. A framework slid across his eyes, and Porter fastened it closed, locking Victor in. His heart rate ticked up as, with a mechanical whir, the table moved and the room disappeared, replaced by the too-close ceiling of the machine in front of Victor’s face.

He heard the doctor leave, the click of the door shutting, and then his voice returned, stretched thin by the intercom. “Hold very still.”

For a full minute, nothing happened. And then a deep knocking sound resonated through the device, a low bass that drowned out the noise in his head. Drowned out everything.

The machine thudded and whirred, and Victor tried to count the seconds, to hold on to some measure of time, but he kept losing his grip. Minutes fell away, taking with them more and more of his control. The buzzing was in his bones now, the first pricks of pain—a pain he couldn’t stifle—crackling across his skin.

“Stop the test,” he said, the words swallowed by the machine.

Porter’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m almost done.”

Victor fought to steady his breathing, but it was no use. His heart thudded. His vision doubled. The horrible electric hum grew louder.

“Stop the—”

The current tore through Victor, bright and blinding. His fingers clutched at the sides of the table, muscles screaming as the first wave crashed over him. Behind his eyes, he saw Angie, standing beside the electric panel.

“I want you to know,” she said as she began to fix sensors to his chest, “that I will never, ever forgive you for this.”

Alarms wailed.

The scanner whined, shuddered, stopped.

Porter was somewhere on the other side of the machine, speaking in a low, urgent voice. The table began to withdraw. Victor clawed at the straps holding his head. Felt them come free. He had to get up. He had to—

The current crashed into him again, so hard the room shattered into fragments—blood in his mouth, his heart losing rhythm, Porter, a pen light turning the world white, a stifled scream—then the pain erased everything.

* * *

VICTOR woke on the exam table.

The lights on the MRI were dark, the opening threaded with scorch marks. He sat up, head spinning, as the world came back into focus. Porter lay several feet away, his body contorted, as if trapped in a spasm. Victor didn’t need to feel for a pulse, or sense the man’s empty nerves, to know that he was dead.

A memory, of another time, another lab, Angie’s body, twisted in the same unnatural way.

Shit.

Victor got to his feet, surveying the room. The corpse. The damage.

Now that his senses had settled, he felt calm, clear-headed again. It was like the break after a storm. A stretch of peace before bad weather built again. It was only a matter of time—which was why every silent second mattered.

There was a syringe on the floor next to Porter’s hand, still capped. Victor slipped it into his pocket and went into the hall, where he’d left his coat. He drew out his cell as the text came in from Dominic.

1 minute, 32 seconds.

Victor took a steadying breath and looked around the empty offices.

He retraced his steps to the exam room, gathered up every scan and printout from Porter’s tests. In the doctor’s office, he cleared the appointment, the digital data, tore off the sheet on which the doctor had made his notes, and the one beneath it for safe measure, systematically erased every sign that he’d ever been inside the building.

Every sign aside from the dead body.

There was nothing to be done about that, short of setting fire to the place—an option he considered, and then set aside. Fires were temperamental things, unpredictable. Better to leave this looking as it did—a heart attack, a freak accident.