“How domestic,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. They didn’t ask about his evening, or Connolly, but Victor could feel the tension in the air like a taut string. His silence on the subject was answer enough.

He caught Mitch’s eye. “I need you to find out everything you can about EON.”

“What’s that?” asked Mitch.

“A problem.” Victor relayed Dominic’s intel, watching Sydney pale and Mitch’s face shift from surprise to concern. When he was done, he turned toward his room. “Start packing.”

“Where are we going?” asked Syd.

“Fulton. Capstone. Dresden. Capital City . . .”

Mitch frowned. “Those are all places we’ve already been.”

“I know,” said Victor. “We’re going back. We need to clean up.”

A shadow crossed Sydney’s face. “You’re going to kill them,” she said. “All the people you’ve met with . . .”

“I don’t have a choice,” he said simply.

“Yes, you do,” said Sydney, crossing her arms. “Why do you have to

—”

“Some know my condition. Some know my power. But all of them have seen my face. From here on out, we leave absolutely no trace, and that means before we go forward, we have to go back.”

A trail of bodies, or a trail of witnesses—that was the choice they were faced with. Neither option was ideal, but at least corpses couldn’t give statements. Victor’s solution was logical, but Sydney wasn’t having it.

“If you kill all the EOs you meet,” she said, “how are you better than Eli?”

Victor’s teeth clenched. “I take no pleasure in this, Sydney, but if EON finds them, they’ll be one step closer to finding us. Do you want that to happen?”

“No, but—”

“Do you know what they’ll do? First they’ll kill Dol, and then they will take you, and me, and Mitch, and we will never see the light of day, let alone each other, ever again.” Sydney’s eyes widened, but Victor went on. “If you’re lucky, they’ll lock you in a cage. Alone. If you’re not, they’ll turn you into a science experiment—”

“Victor,” warned Mitch, but he only stepped closer. Sydney stared up at him, fists clenched. He knelt so they were eye to eye.

“You think I’m acting like Eli? You think I’m playing God? Fine, you play, Sydney. You decide, right now, who should live. Us, or them.”

Tears hovered on her lashes. She didn’t look at him, kept her gaze focused on his shirtfront as her lips moved, short and soundless.

“What was that?” he asked.

This time, he heard it.

“Us.”

X

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

VICTOR braced himself against the sink, waiting for the drug to hit his system, wondered if the effects were, at this point, placebic. Less medicine and more a misplaced hope. For calm. For time. For control.

He pushed off the counter and returned to the bedroom, to the dresser, to the shallow stack of paper there, Jack Linden’s face staring up from the top. Black streaks cut across the profile, erasing line after line after line until only two words remained. Five letters scattered inelegantly across the page.