Vengeful

ELI turned through Marcella’s file. Across the cell, Victor leaned, hands in his pockets, against the wall.

For so long, he’d thought Victor was haunting him—now that Eli knew that the man was alive, he knew the phantom was nothing but a figment of his own imagination. A touch of madness. He did his best to ignore it.

Marcella Riggins hadn’t tried to hide her work. On the contrary, she’d put it on display. The three agents’ bodies—what was left of them—lay on the floor, their limbs arranged in a disturbing tableau.

A macabre version of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

The first soldier, missing a part of his skull, had his hands against his ears. The second, with a broken neck, had his own armored gloves over his eyes. And the third, little more than brittle bones inside a tactical suit, had no head at all.

Sitting like a centerpiece on the glass coffee table was a single ruined helmet.

How long do you think it will take her to penetrate whatever armor your men are wearing?

Stell examined the helmet and found a folded piece of paper tucked beneath.

Inside, in elegant, curving letters, there was a single line.

Stay out of my way.

“And you?” she asked, dusting her palms. “Are you looking for my husband?”

“Oh, he’s well dead. You made sure of that.” June whistled. “That’s quite a talent you have there.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I know you walked into a room with five men sitting round a table playing cards, and when you left, two were ash, one had a bullet in his head, and the other two are saying all kinds of strange things.” June smiled conspiratorially. “Next time, you should probably just kill them all. No good having survivors running their mouths. See, Marcella,” she added, stepping closer, “the problem is, one of those men, the ones you killed that night—he was mine.”

“My condolences,” said Marcella dryly.

June waved her hand. “Mine to kill. And in my line of work, it’s poor form to take a bounty off another.”

Marcella raised a brow. “You’re a hit man?”

“Hey now, no need to be sexist. We come in all shapes. But yeah, sure. And the way I see it, you owe me a death.”

Marcella crossed her arms. “Is that so.”

“It is.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Matter of fact, I think you know him. Antony Hutch.”

“Who are you?” Marcella called over her shoulder to the living room, where the shapeshifter was patting down the soldiers’ bodies.

“I told you,” June called back in a lilting voice.

“No,” said Marcella, “you really didn’t.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a man walking casually toward her. He looked innocuous enough, dressed in a pullover and slacks, but black combat boots showed beneath the hems.

“Marcella Riggins?” he asked, continuing his slow advance.

She turned toward him. “Do I know you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “But I was hoping we could talk.”

“About what?” she asked.

His smile stiffened, set. “About what happened the other night.”

“What happened . . .” she echoed, as if wracking her memory. “Do you mean when my husband tried to burn our house down around me? Or when I melted his face off with my bare hands?”

The man’s expression stayed steady, even. His steps slowed, but didn’t stop, each stride closing the gap between them.

“I think you should stay there . . .” Marcella drew the gun from her bag, not all the way, just enough to let him see the chrome polish along the back of the barrel.

“Come on, now,” he said, lifting his hands as if she were a wild animal, something to be corralled. “You don’t want to make a scene.”

Marcella tipped her head. “What makes you think that?”

She swung the gun up and fired.

Her first shot took the man in the knee.

He gasped, buckled, and before he could even reach for the weapon holstered at his ankle, she fired a second shot into his head.

“You’re asking if I’m an EO.”

Stell’s gaze was steady, unflinching. “We have no way of knowing if every person Eli targeted was actually—”

Dominic slammed the tablet down on the table. “I gave my flesh and blood and bones to this country. I gave everything I had to this country. I almost died for this country. And I didn’t get any special powers out of it. I wish I had—instead, I got a body full of scrap parts, and a lot of pain, but I’m still here, still doing what I can, because I want to keep people safe. Now, if you don’t want to hire me, that’s your choice. But have the balls to make up a better reason than this . . . sir.”

Dominic sat back, breathless, hoping the outburst had been enough to convince the other man.

The silence stretched out. And then, at last, Stell nodded and said, “We’ll be in touch.”

Dismissed, Dom rose from his chair and left. He went into the men’s room across the hall, and into the safety of a stall, before vomiting up everything in his stomach.

“THEY’RE watching my place,” he said when Victor answered the phone.

He was jogging through a small park, his breath coming in short, even beats.

“I’d expect as much,” said Victor, unfazed.

Dom slowed to a walk. “Why am I doing this?”

“Because ignorance is only bliss if you want to get caught.”

With that, Victor hung up.

He didn’t know what Victor was thinking, or how many steps ahead he was thinking it. In Dom’s head, Victor went around acting like the world was one big game of chess. Tapping people and saying, “You’re a pawn, you’re a knight, you’re a rook.”

Dom chafed a little at the thought, but then, he’d learned not to ask questions in the army. To trust the orders as they came down, knowing that he couldn’t see the whole scope. War needed both kinds of people—those who played the long game and those who played the short one.

Victor was the former.

Dominic was the latter.

That didn’t make him a pawn.

It made him a good soldier.

“If you were an EO,” said Bara around a mouthful of sandwich, “what would your power be?”

It was an innocuous question—inevitable, even, given the environment. But Dom’s mouth still went dry. “I—don’t know.”

“Oh, come on,” pressed Bara. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.”

“I’d want X-ray vision,” said Holtz. “Or the ability to fly. Or the ability to transform my car into other cars whenever I get bored.”

Rios looked up from her own table. “Your mind,” she said, “truly is a marvel.”

No, Haverty hadn’t been foolish enough to steal from EON on his way out. Instead, he’d done it every day. Stolen his research one piece at a time. A single sample. A slide. An ampule. Each token small enough to be claimed an accident, if he’d been caught. A slip of the mind. Patience really was the highest virtue. And progress was a thing achieved one halting step at a time.

Every night—or morning—when he’d returned home, Haverty had taken up a notepad and reprinted word for word the notes he’d made in the sanctum of the EON compound.

Men ahead of their time were always, by definition, outside of it.

Haverty was no different.