Vengeful (Villains #2)(125)
He started toward Haverty, but halfway there his front knee buckled. Folded, as if it had gone to sleep. The world rocked sideways, and Eli collapsed to his hands and knees in the street, limbs suddenly sluggish, head spinning.
This wasn’t right.
None of this was right.
He was on his back now, Dr. Haverty kneeling beside him, measuring his pulse. Eli tried to pull free, but his body didn’t listen.
And then, for the first time in thirteen years, Eli Ever passed out.
*
VICTOR surged out up the stairs and out into the parking garage, the steel door crashing behind him. His shoulder was still bleeding, leaving a veritable breadcrumb trail on the concrete. On top of that, the humming had spread to his limbs, the tone pitching to a whine inside his head. He was running out of time.
He scanned the garage—would Eli take a car, or set off on foot? There were no empty spaces, not here on the street level, and the odds of Eli wasting precious seconds on higher floors was slim.
On foot, then.
He started toward the exit, and saw the security guard slumped on the ground, his body propped up against the booth. He’d been stripped to shorts and socks. Victor stepped past him and out onto the side street.
There were too many alleys, too many ways for Eli to go, and every time Victor chose wrong, it would only increase Eli’s lead.
Something shimmered on the ground nearby, and Victor knelt to retrieve it. A tranquilizer dart.
He looked up, and noted a pair of security cameras mounted high overhead.
He felt in the pockets of the stolen coat, and was relieved to find a cell phone. He dialed Mitch’s number, hoping for once the man hadn’t obeyed his orders.
It rang two times, three, and then Mitch picked up. “The courthouse is coming down! What the hell’s going on?”
“Where are you?” asked Victor.
A moment’s hesitation. “About two blocks away.”
He was relieved to hear it.
“I still haven’t gotten ahold of Syd.”
“Well, since you’re still here,” said Victor, looking up at the security cameras, “I need you to hack something.”
*
STELL ground his teeth as Holtz and Briggs helped pry his leg free from the wreckage.
He’d broken something, he knew, but he’d gotten lucky. Samson’s body was buried somewhere at the bottom of the wreckage, swallowed up along with more than half of the courthouse floor. The rest of the building didn’t look very stable.
“Another ambulance is on its way,” said Briggs over the noise of the approaching sirens.
Holtz had kept the crowds at bay, done everything he could to minimize civilian exposure during the incident. But now emergency crews were rapidly arriving, and the crowd outside was too curious, too used to getting their way, demanding answers, explanations, casualty reports.
Stell’s mind spun, but he only had a few minutes to contain the scene here.
Marcella Morgan’s body lay draped atop the broken marble far below, a testament to her own destructive power.
Heaped at the farthest edge of the ruined floor was the second EO—Jonathan—one hand hanging like a rag doll over the chasm’s edge.
There was no sign of June.
Or Victor.
Or Eli.
“Pull up the trackers.”
“I already did,” said Briggs, grimly.
She offered Stell Eli’s coat in one hand. In the other, she held out five small tracking devices.
Stell’s stomach dropped.
“It gets worse,” said Holtz, producing the rusted remains of Eli’s collar, broken, useless.
Stell swept the shards from Holtz’s hand, and they rained down onto the ruined floor.
“Call in everyone we have,” he ordered. “And find Cardale.”
XX
THE LAST NIGHT
LOCATION UNCERTAIN
THE first thing Eli noticed was the smell.
The antiseptic odor of a lab, but beneath that, something sickly sweet. Like rot. Or chloroform. His other senses caught up, registered a too-bright light. Dull steel. His head was cotton, his thoughts syrup. Eli didn’t remember what it felt like to be drunk—it had been so long since anything affected him—but he thought it must have been more pleasant. This—the dry-mouthed, head-pounding longing to retch—was not.
He tried to sit up.
Couldn’t.
He was lying on a plastic sheet on top of a crate, his wrists zip-tied to the wood slats beneath. A strap ran across his mouth, holding his head down against the crate. Eli’s fingers felt for something, anything, found only plastic.
“Not as fancy as my old lab, I know,” said Haverty, swimming into focus. “But it will have to do. Needs must, and all.” The doctor dipped out of Eli’s sight, but never stopped talking. “I still have friends in EON, you know, and when they told me you were being released, well—I don’t know if you believe in fate, Mr. Cardale”—he heard tools being shifted on a metal tray—“but surely you can see the poetry in our reunion. You are, after all, the reason for my breakthrough. It’s only right that you’re now going to be my first true test subject.”
Haverty reappeared, holding a syringe in Eli’s line of sight. That same electric blue liquid danced inside.