Despite a festive air, both had done their best to avoid the subject of what had happened, and how lucky Eli—and really both of them—had been. Neither seemed eager to talk about it, and in the absence of any ExtraOrdinary symptoms—other than feeling extraordinarily lucky—neither had reason to gloat as much as thank their stars. Which they did freely, tipping imaginary but brimming glasses skyward as they stumbled home. They poured invisible liquor on the concrete as a gift to earth or God or fate or whatever force had let them have their fun and live to know it had been nothing more than that.
Victor felt warm despite the flurries of snow, alive, and even welcomed the last dregs of pain from his own unpleasant proximity to death. Eli beamed dazedly at the night sky, and then he stepped off the sidewalk. Or tried to. But his heel caught the edge, and he stumbled, landing on his hands and knees among a patch of dirty snow, and tire tracks, and broken glass. He hissed, recoiled, and Victor saw blood, a smear of red against the dingy, snow-dusted street. Eli proceeded to sit on the lip of the curb, tilting his palm toward the nearest streetlamp to get a better look at the gash there, glittering with the remains of someone’s abandoned beer bottle.
“Ouch,” said Victor, leaning over him to examine the cut and nearly losing his balance. He caught himself on the streetlamp as Eli cursed softly and pulled the largest shard out.
“Think I’ll need stitches?”
He held his bloody hand up for Victor to inspect, as if the latter’s vision and judgment were any better than his own right now. Victor squinted, and was about to reply with as much authority as he could muster, when something happened.
The cut on Eli’s palm began to close.
The world, which had been swaying in Victor’s vision, came to an abrupt stop. Stray flakes hung in the air, and their breath hovered in clouds over their lips. There was no movement except that of Eli’s flesh healing.
And Eli must have felt it, because he lowered his hand into his lap, and the two gazed down as the gash that had run from pinkie to thumb knitted itself back together. In moments, the bleeding had stopped—the blood already lost now drying on his skin—and the wound was nothing more than a wrinkle, a faint scar, and then not even that.
The cut was just … gone.
Hours passed in blinks as the two let it sink in, what that meant, what they had done. It was extraordinary.
It was ExtraOrdinary.
Eli rubbed his thumb over the fresh skin of his palm, but Victor was the first to speak, and when he did, it was with an eloquence and composure perfectly befitting the situation.
“Holy shit.”
* * *
VICTOR stared up at the place where the lip of their apartment building’s roof met the cloudy night. Every time he closed his eyes he felt like he was falling over, getting closer and closer to the brick, so he tried to keep them open, focusing on that strange seam overhead.
“Are you coming?” asked Eli.
He was holding the door open, practically bouncing in his eagerness to get inside and find something else that could physically wound him. Zeal burned in his eyes. And while Victor didn’t exactly blame him, he had no desire to sit around and watch Eli stab himself all night. He’d watched him try all the way home, leaving a dotted red trail in the snow from the blood that escaped before the wounds could heal. He’d seen the ability. Eli was an EO, in the (regenerating) flesh. Victor had felt something when Eli had come back to life seemingly EO-free: relief. With Eli’s new abilities being thrust into his wavering line of vision all the way home, Victor’s relief had dissolved into a ripple of panic. He would be relegated to sidekick, note-taker, the brick wall to bounce ideas off of.
No.
“Vic, you coming or not?”
Curiosity and jealousy ate at Victor in equal parts, and the only way he knew to stifle both, to quell the urge to wound Eli himself—or at least to try—was to walk away.
He shook his head, then stopped abruptly when the world continued swinging side to side.
“Go on,” he said, mustering a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. “Go play with some sharp objects. I need to take a walk.” He descended the stairs, and nearly fell twice in three steps.
“Are you fit to walk, Vale?”
Victor waved him on inside. “I’m not driving. Just going to get some air.”
And with that, he took off into the dark, with two goals on his mind.
The first was simple: to put as much distance as he could between himself and Eli before he did something he’d regret.
The second was trickier, and his body hurt to even think of it, but he had no choice.
He had to plan his next attempt at death.
XVIII
TWO DAYS AGO
THE ESQUIRE HOTEL
I want to believe that there’s more. That we could be more. Hell, we could be heroes.
Victor’s chest tightened when he looked at Eli’s unchanging face in the newspaper photograph. It was disconcerting; all he had of Eli was a mental picture, a decade old, and yet it lined up perfectly, like duplicate slides, with the one on the page. It was the same face in every technical way … and yet it wasn’t. The years had worn on Victor in more obvious ways, hardening him, but they hadn’t left Eli untouched. He didn’t appear a day older, but the arrogant smile he’d often flashed in college had given way to something crueler. Like that mask he’d worn for so long had finally fallen off, and this was what lurked behind it.
And Victor, who was so good at picking things apart, at understanding how they worked, how he worked, looked at the photo, and felt … conflicted. Hate was too simple a word. He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli. He wanted to see him. And he wanted to see him suffer. He wanted to see the look in Eli’s eyes when he lit them up with pain. He wanted his attention.
Eli was like a thorn beneath Victor’s skin, and it hurt. He could turn off every nerve in his body, but Victor couldn’t do a damned thing about the twinge he felt when he thought of Cardale. The worst part of going numb was that it took away everything but this, the smothering need to hurt, to break, to kill, pouring over him like a thick blanket of syrup until he panicked and brought the physical sensations back.
Now that he was so close, the thorn seemed to burrow deeper. What was Eli doing here in Merit? Ten years was a long time. A decade could shape a man, change everything about him. It had changed Victor. What about Eli? Who had he become?
He fidgeted under the sudden urge to burn the photo, to shred it, as if damaging the paper could somehow cause damage to Eli, too, which of course it couldn’t. Nothing could. So he sat down, and set the page aside, beyond arm’s reach so he wouldn’t be tempted to ruin it.
The paper called Eli a hero.
The word made Victor laugh. Not just because it was absurd, but because it posed a question. If Eli really was a hero, and Victor meant to stop him, did that make him a villain?
He took a long sip of his drink, tipped his head back against the couch, and decided he could live with that.
XIX
TEN YEARS AGO
LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY
WHEN Victor got home from his labs the next day, he found Eli sitting at the kitchen table, carving up his skin. He was dressed in the same sweatpants and shirt Victor had found him in the night before when he had finally come home from his walk, several degrees closer to sober, and with the beginnings of a plan. Now Victor grabbed a candy bar and hung his bag on the back of a wooden kitchen chair before sinking into it. He peeled away the wrapper and tried to ignore the way his appetite fizzled as he watched Eli work.
“Shouldn’t you be shadowing at the hospital today?” asked Victor.
“It’s not even a conscious process,” murmured Eli reverently as he drew the blade up his arm, the wound healing in the knife’s wake, a blossom of appearing and disappearing red, like a sick magic trick. “I can’t stop the tissue from repairing.”
“
Poor you,” teased Victor coolly. “Now if you don’t mind…” He held up the candy bar.
Eli paused midcut. “Squeamish?”
Victor shrugged. “Just easily distracted,” he said. “You look awful. Have you slept? Eaten?”
Eli blinked, and set the knife aside. “I’ve been thinking.”
“The body doesn’t survive on thoughts.”
“I’ve been thinking about this ability. Regeneration.” His eyes glittered as he spoke. “Why of all the potential powers I ended up with this one. Maybe it’s not random. Maybe there’s some correlation between a person’s character and their resulting ability. Maybe it’s a reflection of their psyche. I’m trying to understand how this”—he held up a blood-stained, but uninjured hand—“is a reflection of me. Why He would give me—”
“He?” asked Victor incredulously. He wasn’t in the mood for God. Not this morning. “According to your thesis,” he said, “an influx of adrenaline and a desire to survive gave you that talent. Not God. This isn’t divinity, Eli. It’s science and chance.”
“Maybe to a point, but when I climbed into that water, I put myself in His hands—”
“No,” snapped Victor. “You put yourself in mine.”
Eli fell silent, but began to rap his fingers on the table. After several moments he said, “What I need is a gun.”
Victor had taken another bite of chocolate, and nearly choked. “And why’s that?”
“To truly test the speed of regeneration. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Victor finished his snack as Eli pushed up from the table to pour himself some water. “Look, I’ve been thinking, too.”
“About what?” asked Eli, leaning back against the counter.
“About my turn.”
Eli’s brow crinkled. “You had it.”
“About my next turn,” Victor said. “I want to try again tonight.”
Eli considered Victor, head cocked. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Eli hesitated. “I can still see the line from your hospital bracelet,” he said at last. “At least wait till you’re feeling better.”
“Actually, I’m feeling fine. Better than. I feel wonderful. I feel like roses and sunshine and glitter.”
Victor Vale did not feel like glitter. His muscles ached, his veins still felt strangely starved of air, and he couldn’t shake the headache that had trailed him since he’d opened his eyes beneath the fluorescent white of the hospital lights.
“Give yourself time to recover, okay?” said Eli. “And then we’ll talk about trying again.”
There was nothing overtly wrong with the words, but Victor didn’t like the way he said them, the same calm, cautious tone people use when they want to let someone down slowly, smoothing a “no” into a “not right now.” Something was wrong. And Eli’s attention was already drifting back toward his knives. Away from Victor.
He clenched his teeth against the curse on his tongue. And then he shrugged carefully.
“Fine,” he said, swinging his bag back onto his shoulder. “Maybe you’re right,” he added with a yawn and a lazy smile. Eli smiled back, and Victor turned toward the hall and his room.
He swiped an epinephrine pen on the way, and closed the door behind him.
* * *
VICTOR hated loud music almost as much as he hated crowds of drunk people. The party had both, and was made more insufferable by Victor’s own sobriety. No booze. Not this time. He wanted—needed—everything to be sharp, especially if he was going to do this alone. Eli was still, presumably, at the apartment, carving up his skin while he assumed Victor was in his room, sulking or studying or both. What Victor had actually been doing was climbing out his window.
He’d felt fifteen again, a kid sneaking out to a party on a school night while his parents sat in the living room and laughed at something mindless on the TV. Or at least, Victor imagined this was what it would have been like had he needed to sneak out. Had anyone ever been home to catch him at it.
Victor moved through the party largely unnoticed, but not unwelcome. He earned a few second glances, but those were mostly because he rarely made an appearance at these kinds of events. He was an outsider by choice, a good enough mimic to charm his way into social circles when he wanted, but more often than not he preferred to stand apart and watch, and most of the school seemed content to let him.
But here he was, winding his way through bodies and music and sticky floors, the epinephrine pen tucked into the inside pocket of his coat, a small Post-it affixed to it that read Use Me. Now, as he found himself surrounded by lights and noise and bodies, Victor felt as if he’d wandered into another world. Is this what normal seniors did? Drank and danced with bodies interlocking like puzzle pieces to music loud enough to drown out thoughts? Angie had taken him to a few parties freshman year, but those had been different. He couldn’t remember anything about the music or the beer, only her. Victor blinked the memory away. Sweat coated his palms as he took a plastic cup, and dumped the contents into a withering house plant. Holding something helped.
At one point he found himself on the balcony, looking down at the frozen lake that ran behind the frats. The sight made him shiver. He knew for optimum results he should mimic Eli, re-create the successful scenario, but Victor couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that. He had to find his own method.
He pushed off the banister, and retreated back into the house. As he continued on a circuit through the rooms, his eyes flicked around, appraising. He was amazed at how myriad the options for a suicide were, and yet how limited the options for one with any certitude of survival.
But Victor was certain of one thing: he wasn’t leaving here without his turn. He wouldn’t go back to the apartment and watch Eli joyfully saw at his skin, marvel at this strange new immortality he hadn’t even tried that hard to find. Victor wouldn’t stand there and coo and take notes for him.
Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick.
By his third lap around the house, he’d scored what he considered to be enough cocaine to induce cardiac arrest (he wasn’t sure, having never engaged in that kind of activity). He’d had to buy from three separate students, since each only had a few hits on them.
On his fourth lap around the house, while working up the nerve to use the cocaine, he heard it. The front door opened—he couldn’t hear that over the music, but from his place on the stairs, he felt the sudden burst of cold—and then a girl squealed and said, “Eli! You made it!”
Victor swore softly, and retreated up the stairs. He heard his own name as he wound through the bodies. He broke through and reached the second-floor landing, then found an unoccupied bedroom with its own bathroom at the back. Halfway through the room, he stopped. A bookcase lined one wall, and there in the center, his own last name leapt out at him in capital letters.
He pulled the massive self-help book from the wall, and opened the window. The sixth book in a series of nine on emotional action and reaction hit the thin coat of snow below with a satisfying thud. Victor shut the window and continued into the bathroom.
On the sink he set his things in order.
First, his phone. He punched in a text to Eli but didn’t hit Send, and set the device to one side. Second, the adrenaline shot. He’d be up to temperature, so hopefully a single direct injection would suffice. It would be hell on the body, but so would everything else he was about to do. He set the needle beside the phone. Third, the coke. He made a neat pile, and began to separate it into lines with a hotel card he found in his back pocket, a relic from the winter trip his parents had dragged him on. Despite an upbringing that would have driven most kids to drugs, Victor had never been much inclined to do them, but he had a good idea of the steps, thanks to a healthy diet of crime dramas. Once the cocaine was in its lines—seven of them—he pulled a dollar from his wallet and rolled it into a narrow straw. As seen on TV.
He looked in the mirror.
“You want to live,” he told hi
s reflection.
His reflection looked unconvinced.
“You need to live through this,” he said. “You need to.”
And then he took a breath and bent over the first line.
The arm came out of nowhere, wrapped around his throat, and slammed him back into the wall opposite the vanity. Victor caught his balance and straightened in time to see Eli run his hand through several hundred dollars’ worth of coke, brushing it all into the sink.
“What the fuck?” Victor hissed, lunging for it. He wasn’t fast enough. Eli’s coke-dusted palm shoved him back again, pinned him to the wall, leaving a white print on the front of his black shirt.
“What the fuck?” parroted Eli with shocking calm. “What the fuck?”
“You weren’t supposed to be here.”
“You come to a party, people notice. Ellis texted me when you showed up. And then Max texts and tells me you’re buying out the coke. I’m not an idiot. What were you thinking?” His free hand grabbed the cell on the sink. He read the text. He made a sound like a laugh, but his fingers tightened around Victor’s collar as his other hand pitched the phone into the shower, where it broke into several pieces on impact.
“What if I hadn’t heard my phone?” He let go of him. “What then?”
“Then I’d be dead,” said Victor with feigned calm. His eyes drifted to the EpiPen. Eli’s attention followed. Before Victor could move, Eli grabbed the pen and drove it down into his own leg. A small gasp escaped his gritted teeth as the contents flooded his system, jarring his lungs and heart, but in moments he recovered.
“I’m only trying to protect you,” Eli said, casting the used cartridge aside.
“My hero,” growled Victor under his breath. “Now fuck off.”
Eli considered him. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
Victor stared past him to the sink, the edge still dusted with cocaine.