“There’s a new case,” said Stell, setting the file and mug in the fiberglass cubby. “I want your thoughts.”

Eli approached the barrier and collected both offerings.

“Marcella Riggins,” he read aloud, returning to his seat and taking a long, slow sip of his drink.

Eli didn’t need coffee, just as he didn’t need to eat or sleep, but some habits were psychological. The steaming mug was a small piece of change in a static world. A concession, a prop, but one that allowed him to pretend, if only for a moment, that he was still human.

Eli set the coffee aside and began to turn through the file. It wasn’t enough—it was never enough—but it was all they would give him. A stack of paper and Stell’s power of observation. And so he flicked through page after page, skimming the evidence, the aftermath, before finally pausing on a photo of human remains, a diamond glinting in the ash. He set the file aside and met Stell’s waiting gaze.

“All right,” said Eli. “Shall we begin?”

IX

FIVE YEARS AGO

X

LOCATION UNCERTAIN

AFTER Eli killed Victor, it was all a blur.

First, the chaos. The red and blue lights, the sirens, the officers storming through the Falcon Price, and the horrible realization they weren’t on his side.

Then came the cuffs, so tight they cut into Eli’s wrists, and the black hood, swallowing the sight of Victor’s corpse and the blood-slicked concrete, muffling the voices and the orders and the slammed doors, erasing everything but Eli’s own breath, his pounding heart, his desperate words.

Burn the body. Burn the body. Burn the body.

Then came the cell—more like a concrete box than a room—and Eli slamming his fists against the door over and over until his fingers broke, and healed, broke, and healed, the only evidence the blood left smeared across the steel.

And then, in the end, there was the lab.

Hands forcing Eli down, cold steel on his back and straps cinched so tight they cut into skin, pale sterile walls and too-bright lights and the chemical smell of disinfectant.

In the center of it all, a man in white, his face swimming above Eli’s.

Dark eyes set deep behind black glasses. Hands drawing on plastic gloves.

“My name,” said the man, “is Dr. Haverty.”

He selected a scalpel as he spoke.

“Welcome to my lab.”

Leaned in close.

“We are going to understand each other.”

And then he began to cut. Dissect—that was the word for it when the subject was dead. Vivisect—that was the word when they were still alive. But when they couldn’t die?

What was the word for that?

Eli’s faith had faltered in that room.

He had found Hell in that room.

And the only sign of God was that, no matter what Haverty did, Eli continued to survive.