Chapter 156: Chapter 156: Interesting mortal
For a heartbeat the cold and the noise blurred, the lab floodlights turning to another kind of sterile white in Elias’s head.
He was nineteen again, first year at the university, barely two weeks into what he thought was freedom. He’d been sleeping in the lab between classes, drowning himself in work so he didn’t have to think about his father’s messages or the obligations he’d slipped. And then, after a full day of study, just past midnight, a shout jolts him while walking through one of the corridors; the smell of ether gone sour hits him like a hammer. One of the graduate researchers had been standing at the end of the corridor, grinning like a cracked mask, red power crawling up his arms and circling his throat like smoke. A colleague whose name Elias couldn’t remember for the life of him now, just the flash of his badge and the sense that the ether had been trying to use him for something.
The grin on Matteo’s corpse was the same.
The red power curling off the ruined body traced the same pattern.
Elias’s breath came out slowly, his eyes still locked on the corpse in front of him. He stepped past the edge of the light before Victor could stop him.
"Elias." Victor’s voice sharpened, but the hand at his shoulder didn’t drag him back. "Stop. That’s not..."
Elias didn’t stop. His boots scraped over the asphalt, bringing him within a pace of the thing bound in Robert’s chain. Matteo’s head twitched toward him, jaw working in a grotesque approximation of laughter.
Up close the ether felt wrong and familiar at once, like a door he had left open years ago. Elias took his gloves off without rushing and tried what he remembered worked that time, almost eight years ago.
He slid the gloves into his coat pocket and let his bare fingers flex once in the cold air. The wrongness coming off Matteo’s body prickled across his skin like static before a storm, the same sickly pull he had felt in that corridor at nineteen. He raised his hand, palm open, and looked at it, trying to remember what he actually did. There was nothing more than the movement of his palm against the graduate’s chest.
Behind him Victor’s presence tightened, a low ripple of red ether brushing his spine like a warning. "Elias..." the word came deeper now, velvet-dark but edged.
"I know," Elias murmured without looking back. "Just... trust me."
He stepped in until he could see the threads clearly. Up close the "strings" were no metaphor at all: thin veins of red ether wound through Matteo’s ruined body, twitching under the skin like live wires, binding joints and tendons, holding him upright as if some distant puppeteer were tugging them.
Elias set his palm flat against the corpse’s chest, exactly where the power knotted most densely. The first shock of contact was icy, a hiss of ether trying to run up his arm. He exhaled slowly, focusing the way he had all those years ago. The pattern in his head clicked into place like an equation being solved.
The red threads quivered, fought, and then began to unravel. One by one the lines detached from Matteo’s skin and whipped back, streaks of light curling off into the air before disappearing into nothing. For a heartbeat the smell of scorched metal filled his nose, then even that was gone.
Matteo sagged immediately. Without the strings, the body was only dead meat again. It slumped against the chains with a wet sound, then toppled forward, lifeless.
The yard fell silent. Even the alphas holding the restraints stared as the last flicker of red ether bled away into the night and then winked out.
Elias lowered his hand, fingers trembling once before he curled them into a fist. His breath came shallow but steady.
Victor’s palm stayed at the back of Elias’s neck, but instead of the heavy steadiness of before, there was a faint tremor of laughter under his thumb. Crimson eyes glinted as he looked at the slack body, then back at Elias. "Well," he said, voice velvet-dark but edged with humor, "that was unexpected."
Elias turned his head a fraction, still staring at the corpse. "I didn’t plan it," he muttered. "First year of university, something similar happened. I just touched him and it stopped. I thought it was a fluke."
Victor’s mouth curved, slow and wicked. "A fluke?" His thumb stroked the side of Elias’s throat once, more a tease than a comfort. "You just dismantled a walking corpse stitched together with red ether like it was a bad experiment. That’s not a fluke, little stabilizer."
One of the alphas shifted his grip on the chain, but Victor only waved a hand lazily without looking at them. "Get it out of here before it leaks on my boots."
Elias blinked at him, a dry, incredulous sound escaping. "You’re... amused?"
"Of course." Victor’s grin sharpened, crimson eyes gleaming like banked fire. "You’ve been sitting in my lap all this time acting like a fragile mortal, and then you walk up and undo something even most gods won’t touch. You’re full of surprises."
"I don’t even know how I did it," Elias said, half under his breath, looking down at his gloved hands as though they belonged to someone else.
Victor leaned in until his mouth was almost at Elias’s ear, his voice slipping velvet-dark across his skin. "Hmm... then let’s find out what else you can do."
Elias’s head turned a fraction, brown eyes narrowing despite the warmth creeping up his neck. "That sounds like the start of an experiment," he muttered. "And I’m not volunteering to be your lab rat."
Victor’s laugh came low and pleased. "Not a rat," he corrected, thumb tracing a lazy circle at the nape of Elias’s neck. "More like a mystery."
"Victor... for the love of any gods, other than you, out there..." Elias exhaled sharply, glancing at the now-lifeless husk being dragged away. "Shouldn’t you, a god, know what is happening?"
Victor’s crimson eyes glinted with something older than amusement. "I know what’s possible," he said softly, the smile still curving his mouth. "But possibility isn’t certainty. What you just did isn’t written anywhere in Uno’s order. It isn’t mine to command."
His thumb kept its slow circle, grounding him. "That’s why I’m amused, Elias. For once in a very long time, something happened in front of me that I didn’t predict."
He leaned in until their foreheads almost touched, voice dropping velvet-dark. "And I like it."
Elias blinked up at him, thrown off balance by the honesty under the teasing. "You... like not knowing?"
Victor’s grin deepened, dangerous and warm all at once. "With you? Very much."
"I feel like I should run." Elias’s voice was dry, but there was no real distance in it; his fingers were still hooked lightly in the front of Victor’s shirt.
Victor’s thumb made another slow circle at the back of his neck, a sound like a soft laugh escaping him. "Run if you want," he murmured, crimson eyes glinting. "I’ll just follow. You’re the first unpredictable thing I’ve held in centuries; I’m not letting you vanish into a corridor like a myth."
Elias let out a huff that was half a laugh, half a groan. "Gods, you’re terrifying."
Victor tilted his head, still smiling. "And yet you’re still here."
"I’m not sure if that says more about you or me."
"Both," Victor said, the word velvet-dark but almost tender. His hand shifted at Elias’s waist, a subtle tug drawing him a fraction closer. "Stay for now. Just until you decide which one of us is the bigger mistake."
"Liar."
Victor’s smile only widened.