Vicious

In the hotel, Victor wakes to Sydney’s screams and Mitch holding him against the couch. He realizes his current is running, so he turns it off. Mitch and Sydney aren’t hurt, but Sydney looks shaken. Victor feels truly guilty for the first time since his imprisonment. He apologizes, tells Mitch to get Sydney to bed, and shuts himself in the bathroom.

At the engineering lab, Victor calls Eli and tells him about the experiment and Angie’s death. Eli is more interested in Victor’s success than Angie’s death, which gives Victor the feeling that “everything was real, but nothing mattered” (119). In the background of the call, Victor hears the distinct sound of the landline phone in their dorm and Eli calling 911. Victor wipes down the lab and leaves.

On the way to his dorm, Victor realizes he feels nothing, as if his sense of pain and touch are gone. The police arrive and arrest him. At the campus police center, a man named Detective Stell interrogates him. Eli told the police Victor is an EO and that he murdered Angie. Victor says Angie’s death was an accident and lies that he found her already dead. Stell agrees to investigate and puts Victor in a holding cell. Victor breaks out and heads to confront Eli.

Shut in the bathroom in the hotel room, Victor laments picking Sydney up, even though he can’t “shake the feeling that she [will] come in handy” (128). He gets his current under control and unbuttons his shirt to stare at the bullet scars from when Eli shot him. Victor wants to put three similar scars on Eli’s chest.

At his dorm, Eli accuses Victor of murdering Angie. Victor counters that Angie’s death is Eli’s fault because he refused to help with Victor’s second NDE. Victor grabs a knife from the table and stabs Eli, ratcheting Eli’s pain up as high as he can, which makes Victor feel good in “A controlling way” (132).

While Victor searches for another knife, Eli arms himself with a gun. The two fight and talk about how death changed them. Eli believes, since he put his life in God’s hands, that he came back as more than he was. On the contrary, Victor knows he lost something when he died because something inside him feels empty. Eli shoots Victor three times. The last thing Victor sees is Eli walking away.