The first time Eli had noticed the shadow on an image of his forearm, he’d taken it for a swatch, just one of those markers used to signal direction on an X-ray. But then it showed up again on an MRI. A small metal rectangle, the faint impression of a grid.

And he knew exactly what it was.

Eli found the same mark on a scan of his lower spine. At his left hip.

The base of his skull. Between his ribs. Disgust had welled like blood as Eli realized—every time Haverty had cut or pried or pinned him open, the doctor had left a tracking device behind. Each one small enough so that Eli’s body, instead of rejecting the objects, simply healed around them.

It was time they came out.

Eli brought his makeshift scalpel to his forearm and pressed down.

The skin split, blood rising instantly along the jagged edge, and an old voice in his head noted that the heat and moisture would act as anticoagulants, before he reminded that voice that his healing power rendered the fact irrelevant.

He clenched his teeth as he drove the plastic deeper.

Haverty had never bothered with shallow wounds. When he opened Eli up, he did it down to bone. The static of the spray would have provided a buffer, but Eli didn’t make a sound.

Still, as his fingers slipped and slid, and blood ran down the drain, Eli felt a tremor of residual panic pass through him. The only kind of mark left by Haverty’s work. Invisible, but insidious.

At last, the tracker came free, a sliver of dark metal clutched between stained fingers. Eli set it in the soap dish with a shaky breath.

One down.

Four to go.

XIII

THE KINGSLEY

MITCH rolled over, and spit a mouthful of blood onto the hardwood floor.

One eye was swelling shut, and he couldn’t breathe through his broken nose, but he was alive. He could move. He could think.

For now, that would have to be enough.

The apartment was empty. The soldiers were gone.

They’d left Mitch behind.

Human.

That one word—a judgment, a sentence—had saved his life. The EON soldiers lacked either the time or the energy to deal with someone so tangential to their pursuit.

Mitch forced himself to his hands and knees with a groan. He had a muddled memory of movement, grasping at consciousness as the soldiers spoke.

We’ve got him.

It took a long time for the words to sink into Mitch’s bruised skull.

Victor.

He got, haltingly, to his feet and looked around, taking in the trashed apartment, the bloodstained floor, the dog lying on the floor nearby.