by V. E. Schwab
* * *
TIME moved strangely for Dom.
Or at least, he moved strangely in time.
On paper he was only thirty-three, but he felt like he’d been alive for longer—and he guessed that, in a way, he had. Dom could step out of the flow of time, into the shadows, where the whole world became a painting in shades of gray, a dark between, a nowhere, where he was the only thing that moved.
Dom had never done the math, but he figured that he’d probably spent weeks—if not months—on the other side, the outside, his own timeline stretching out, losing shape.
Once, as an experiment, he had stepped into the shadows and stayed there, curious to know how long he could last out of time. It was like holding your breath, and at the same time it wasn’t—there was oxygen in the space between, but there was also weight, pressure—a pressure that had nearly broken him before, when every step was pain. A pressure that now registered as drag, challenging, but by no means impermeable.
Since then, every morning and every night, Dominic spent time out of time. Sometimes he only moved around his apartment, and sometimes he went further afield, measuring the ground he could cover, instead of the seconds that passed.
* * *
AS the transport van slowed, Dom’s attention was pulled back to the metal bench, the darkened hull, the other waiting bodies.
A few minutes later, it finally came to a stop. The doors opened, and they were ushered out onto smooth asphalt. Dominic squinted, disoriented by the sudden morning light. They were standing in front of a building that had to be EON.
From the outside, it looked . . . innocuous. Bland, even. There was a perimeter wall, but no barbed wire, no obvious gunner posts.
The group reached the front doors, which parted with the hiss of an airlock. The lobby—if you could call it a lobby—was sleek and open, but between the front doors and that space was a security port. One by one, the six were called forward by name and instructed to empty their pockets and step into the scanner.
Klinberg. Matthews. Linfield.
Dominic’s pulse quickened.
Bara. Plinetti.
Victor had said they couldn’t hold him, but he didn’t know that, not for sure. These people, their entire job was capturing people like him. Surely their technology had been adapted to that task. What if they’d found a way to measure the difference between a human and EOs? What if they could detect people like him?
“Rusher,” said an officer, ushering Dominic forward. He let out a low breath and stepped into the scan.
An error sound—a ringing alarm—echoed through the lobby.
Dom staggered backward out of the scan, braced for the walls to open and black-clad soldiers to come pouring in. He was ready to step out of the world and into the shadows, ready to forfeit his identity, his anonymity, the whole fucking thing, and face Victor’s wrath—but the officer only rolled his eyes. “You got parts?”
“What?” asked Dominic, dazed.
“Metal. In your body. You got to specify that kind of thing before you go in.”
The soldier briskly typed in a new set of commands. “Okay. Now go.”
Dom forced himself to step back in, praying the scan couldn’t pick up his panic.
“Hold still.”
He felt like he was being Xeroxed. A bright band of white light tracked up and then back down his body.
“Step out.”
Dominic did, fighting to stop the tremor from showing in his limbs.
One of the other guys—Bara—clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Jeez, man, how tight are you wound?”
Dom managed a nervous chuckle. “Not much for loud noises,” he said. “Blame an IED.”
“Bad luck, man.” The grip loosened. “But they put you back together well.”
Dom nodded. “Well enough.”
They were led to a room with no chairs, nowhere to sit, no signs of comfort at all. Just bare walls, empty floor. The door swung shut behind them. And locked.
“You think it’s a test?” asked one of the women—Plinetti—after thirty minutes.
“If so, it’s a shit one,” said Matthews, stretching out on the floor. “It’ll take more than a white box to fuck with me.”
Dom rocked on his heels, shoulders tipping back against the wall.
“Could use some coffee,” said Bara with a yawn.
The last guy—Klinberg—spoke up. “Hey,” he said in a mock whisper. “You ever seen one?”
“One what?” asked the other woman. Linfield.
“You know. What they keep here.”
What, he’d said. Not who. Dom resisted the urge to correct him as the door swung open and a female soldier walked in. She was tall and lean, with warm brown skin and short black hair. Most of the recruits sprang to their feet—attention was a hard habit to break—but the guy on the ground rose slowly, almost lazily.
“I’m Agent Rios,” said the soldier, “and I’ll be leading you through today’s orientation.” She strode the length of the room. “Some of you are wondering what we do here. EON is separated into Containment, Observation, and Neutralization. Containment teams are dedicated to the location, pursuit, and capture of EOs. Observation of those EOs is stationed here at the base.”
Klinberg raised his hand. “Which team gets to kill them?”
Dominic’s chest tightened, but Rios’s expression didn’t falter. “Neutralization is a last resort, and its teams are built from those who’ve proven themselves in other departments. Safe to say, Klinberg, you won’t be killing EOs any time soon. If that’s a deterrent for you, let me know so I can address the remaining five candidates without your distraction.”
Klinberg had the sense to shut up.
“Before we begin,” continued Rios, “you’re about to sign a nondisclosure agreement. If you break it, you will not be arrested. You will not be sued.” She smiled grimly. “You will simply disappear.”
A tablet was passed around, and one by one they pressed their thumbs against the screen. Once it was back in Rios’s hands, the soldier continued speaking. “Most of you have heard the term EO. And most of you are probably skeptical. But the fastest way to disabuse you of doubt is through a demonstration.”
The doors opened at her back.
“Follow me.”
* * *
“KEEP your hands inside the ride,” whispered Klinberg as they filed into the hall.
Remember this place, thought Dominic as he fell in line. Remember everything. But it was a maze of white, sterile and uniform and disorienting. They passed through several sets of doors, each sealed, requiring a swipe from Agent Rios’s key card.
“Hey,” whispered Bara. “I heard they have that killer here. The one that offed, like, a hundred other EOs. You think it’s true?”
Dom didn’t answer. Was Eli really somewhere in this building?
Agent Rios tapped a comm on her shoulder. “Cell Eight, status?”
“Irritable,” answered the person on the other end.
A grim smile crossed her lips. “Perfect.”
She swiped them through a final door, and Dominic felt his heart lurch. They were in a hangar, empty except for a freestanding cell in the center of the room. It was a cube made of fiberglass, and trapped inside, like a firefly in a jar, was a woman.
She knelt in the middle of the floor, wearing a kind of jumpsuit, its fabric glossy, as if coated.
“Tabitha,” said Agent Rios, her voice even.
“Let me out.”
The recruits moved around the cube, as if she were a piece of art, or a specimen, something to be considered from every side.
Matthews even rapped his knuckles on the glass, as if he were at a zoo. “Don’t feed the animals,” he muttered under his breath.
Dominic felt sick.
The prisoner rose to her feet. “Let me out.”
“Ask nicely,” said Rios.
The prisoner was beginning to glow, the light coming from beneath her skin, a deep red-orange like h
eated metal. “Let me out!” she screamed, her voice crackling.
And then, she ignited.
Flame licked up her skin, engulfing her from head to toe, her hair standing up in a plume of blue-white light, like the tip of a match.
Several of the recruits recoiled. One covered his mouth. Others stared in fascination. Surprise. Fear.
Dominic feigned shock, but the fear was real. It crept through his limbs, a warning, that old gut feeling that said wrong wrong wrong—just like it had the second before Dom’s foot hit the IED, the instant before his world changed forever. A fear that had less to do with the woman on fire, and more to do with the cell holding her, the heat that didn’t even penetrate the foot-thick fiberglass.
Rios hit a switch on the wall, and sprinklers went off inside the cell, followed by the sizzle of a doused fire. The cube filled with steam, and when the water cut off and the white smoke cleared, the prisoner sat in a heap on the floor of the cell, soaking wet and heaving for breath.
“All right,” said Rios, “show-and-tell’s over.” She turned toward the recruits. “Any questions?”
* * *
THE black van was waiting at the end of the day.
All the way back to the city, the other recruits chatted, making small talk, but Dom closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.
The “demonstration” had been followed by an interview, an explanation of training protocol, a psych eval, each procedure executed in a way so grounded, so ordinary, that they’d been clearly designed to make candidates forget the strangeness of EON’s purpose.
But Dominic couldn’t forget. He was still shaken from the sight of the woman on fire, and certain that he’d never get out with his secret intact, so he was surprised—and suspicious—when, at the end of it all, Rios told him to report back the next day for further training.
Dom closed his eyes as the van sped on. One by one it stopped and the others were deposited outside their homes. One by one, until he was the only one left, and as the van doors slammed shut on him, and him alone, Dom was gripped anew by panic. He was sure that he could feel freeway moving beneath the tires, sure that they were taking him back to EON, to his own fiberglass cube.
“Rusher.”
Dominic looked up and realized that the van was idling, the back doors open, his apartment building visible beyond in the dusky light. The soldier handed Dom the ziplock bag containing his phone, and Dom got out, but as he climbed the steps and went inside, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched.
There, on the street, an unfamiliar car. He switched the TV on, returned to the window—it was still there, idling. Dom changed into workout clothes, took a deep breath, and slipped out of time.
The world went silent, and heavy, and gray, all the sound and movement leached out of the room. Dom made his way to the front door, fighting against the drag of frozen time.
Back when every step was pain, Dom couldn’t bear to spend more than a few moments in this heavy, dark place. But after months of training, his limbs and lungs moved steadily—if not easily—against the resistance.
He descended the stairs, his steps soundless when earlier they had echoed. Through the front doors and onto the curb. Dom paused beside the unfamiliar car and bent to examine the figure in the driver’s seat, a cell half raised to their ear. The man had the look of ex-mil, and the file on the seat beside him was printed with Dominic’s name.
He looked back and up at his apartment, the glow of the TV a splash of light against the curtains. Then he turned and walked two blocks to the nearest subway. Halfway down the stairs, he stepped back out of the shadows and into the world, into light and color and time, and vanished into the evening commute.
* * *
“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.
Dominic returned to EON the next day, via the black van, to find the initial group of six reduced to five. No Klinberg. By the third day, Matthews was gone too. Rios led them through exercises, drills, tests, and Dom did exactly as he was told. Tried to keep his head down and his expression blank. And still he expected to be cut.
Wanted to be cut.
He was heading back to the van on the third day when he was stopped by Rios.
“Director Stell would like a word.”
Dominic stiffened. He’d never met the man, but he knew Stell’s reputation. Knew he was the detective who sent Victor to prison back in college. The man who tracked Eli to Merit. And, of course, the man who’d started EON.
Run, said a voice in Dom’s head.
He looked from Rios to the compound’s entrance, the sliding doors hissing closed.
Run before they shut.
But if he did, that would be the end of it. His identity would be known, his cover blown. And then Dom would have to keep running. Always.
He forced himself to fall in line.
Rios led him to an office at the end of a long white hall. She knocked once, and opened the door.
Director Stell sat in a high-backed chair on the opposite side of a broad steel desk. He had black hair just starting to silver, his face reduced to angles as he stared down at a tablet.
“Mr. Rusher. Please sit down.”
“Sir.” Dominic sat.
The door closed behind him with a click.
“Something has been bothering me,” said Stell without looking up. “You ever forget something, and you can’t remember what it is? It’s a vicious little mind game. Distracting, too. Like an itch you can’t scratch.” Stell set the tablet down, and Dominic saw his own face staring up from the screen. Not the photo taken in the security scan, or one pulled from hall surveillance. No, the photo was a few years old, from his time in the service. “It was your name,” continued Stell. “I knew I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t remember where.” Stell turned the tablet and nudged it across the steel table. “Do you know what that is?”
Dominic scanned the screen. Beside his photo was a kind of profile, basic details—age, birthday, parents—along with facts about his life—address, schooling, etc.—but there was an error.
Dominic’s middle name was listed here as Eliston.
His real middle name was Alexander.
“Have you heard of Eli Ever?” asked Stell.
Dom stilled, searching for the right answer, the right amount of knowledge. It had been public news—but how much of it, and which pieces? He’d only met Eli once, and only for an instant, the breath it took to step into the Falcon Price and pull Sydney—and her dog—out.
“The serial killer?” ventured Dom.
Stell nodded. “Eliot Cardale—known as Eli Ever in the press—was one of the most dangerous ExtraOrdinaries in existence. He killed nearly forty people, and briefly used the Merit police databases—and the police force, for that matter—to create a list of targets, profiles of those he suspected to be EOs. This,” said Stell slowly, “is one of those profiles.”
Once, when Dominic was overseas, he’d walked into a room and found a live bomb. Not like the IED he’d stepped on. No, he’d never had time to see that explosion coming. But the bomb in this room had been as big as a steel drum, and the whole place was booby-trapped around it. He remembered looking down, seeing the trigger wire, barely an inch in front of his left boot.
Dom had wanted nothing more than to run away, as far as possible, but he hadn’t known where the other wires were, or even how he’d made it that far without triggering them. He’d had to pick his way out, one agonizing step at a time.
And here he was again, his footing precarious—one wrong move, and everything would blow.
“You’re asking if I’m an EO.”
&nb
sp; 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.
III
THREE WEEKS AGO
EON
BARA smacked his palm on the table and got up.
“Hate to eat and run,” he said, “but I’ve got a mission.”
“No way,” said Holtz, “they cleared you for fieldwork?” He turned on Rios. “What gives? I’ve been petitioning for weeks to get on Containment.”
Bara smoothed his uniform. “It’s because I’m such an asset.”
Rios snorted. “It’s because you’re totally useless here.”
Bara put a hand to his heart, as if wounded, then shot back, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You don’t do fieldwork.”
She met his gaze, her gray eyes flat. “Someone has to make sure the monsters don’t get out.”
Dom was surprised. He’d been there for two years, and witnessed a handful of attempts—an EO managed to put a hole in one of the fiberglass walls, another tore free from restraints during a routine med check—but he’d never heard of an actual escape.
“Has an EO ever gotten out?”
Rios’s mouth twitched at the corner. “People don’t get out of EON, Rusher. Not once we put them here.”
